Louisville Law Examiner 4.5, January 30, 1979

Louisville Law Examiner
Volume 4 Number 5
Moot Court
Board Makes
New Plans
s a requirement for graduation, all U
of L law tudents must complete the first­year
moot court program. Just what "the
program" is, its value to the participants
and the quality of it administration varies
from year to year, primarily because the ef­fort
i tudent-operated and in recent years
each uccessive Moot Court Board has
changed the format.
This year's Board is placing special em­phasi
on the first-year program, both in
terms of the energies and the manpower it
is devoting to the project.
Second-year student and Moot Court
Board member Jim Seiffert is the chairman
of the frrst-year moot court program.
Along with eight members of the student
body at large and three other Board
members, he controls the program. Struc­turally,
the committee was authorized by
the Moot Court Board and, according to
Mr. Seiffert, it stays in close touch with
Board president Jeff Stiles.
Mr. Seiffert is wholly enthusiastic about
the attitudes and the efforts of the commit­tee
members. He said that most of the par­ticipants
are involved primarily because
they hope to raise the quality of the pro­gram
above that of their first-year ex­periences,
and also because they would like
(Continued on page 10)
SPrving The University of Louisville School of Law Community
Louisville, Kentucky, January 30, 1979 Circulation 3800
Pr f r Marli• M. olz pnparn to mail h" lat~l man11 ript fnr W~t's F~d~ral l'rac:riu Manual. A scholarship fund ~l a blis lted by members of
the senior class ha bren named after "The Ju d ~te" In hnnnr his ~·ea rs of service to the law sehoul.
Cost of New Wing
Flies Out of Sight
Law Students Establish
Marlin M. Volz Scholarship
by Valerie Sal en
The Examiner reported last
semester (in the article, "Questions
Remain Concerning Accreditation,''
Sept. 12, 1978 issue of the Examiner)
that the Accreditation Committee of
the American Bar Association
(ABA) Section of Legal Education
and Admissions to the Bar had
directed the School of Law to com­plete
plans by July 7, 1979, for an ex­pansion
of the present facilities. This
requirement was made in order to in­sure
that the School of Law would
continue to progress toward com­pliance
with the ABA's minimum
space requirement for law schools.
Plans for a new wing for the
School of Law appeared to be pro­gressing
well until sometime in
December, when the architects
employed by the University of
Louisville to design the building
plans made some final adjustments
in their estimate of cost-per-square­foot
for the new construction and
found that the new figure significantly
exceeded their earlier estimates.
According to Student Bar Associa­tion
President Stephen M. Arnett,
who is a member of the School of
Law Building Advisory. Committee,
it was discovered that costs would
run about $83 per square foot, in­stead
of $55 per square foot as
originally planned. This increased
the total projected cost of the new
wing from the 5.9 million approved
by University of Louisville President
James G. Miller to a cost of about 7
million, and the building plans were
consequently "put into abeyance,"
according to Mr. Arnett.
The School of Law is once again
working on building plans. But, Mr.
Arnett explained, the forced aban­donment
of the original plans put the
school "back at square one," and
the process of hammering out a
building concept which is
economically feasible as well as ade­quate
to accommodate the various
future needs of the School of Law
must be started again.
It is not known at this time what
building design will finally be
adopted, but President Miller has
stipulated that the new wing must be
symmetrical with the old wing of the
School of Law (the library wing)
when viewed from the oval, Mr.
Arnett said.
The Examiner will publish a com­plete
report on the building plans for
the new wing of the School of Law
after the plans receive final approval.
by Greg Yopp
Twenty-four students from the University
of Louisville School of Law have pledged
$1,000 each to the University of Louisville
Foundation, Inc. for the recently establish­ed
Marlin M. Volz Scholarship Fund.
The Marlin M. Volz Scholarship Fund is
the result of conversations between Ken­neth
W. Golliher, J. Scott Preston, and
Robert Russell. (Mr. Preston is a December
1978 graduate of the Law School and both
Mr. Golliher and Mr. Russell are third-year
students.) But why do three law students
establish a scholarship fund and solicit
substantial pledges from their classmates?
"U of L has had ii's hard knocks ... and
a lot of people do nothing but complain,
'they don't do this and they don't do
that.' I'll be an alumnus next year and I
want to do something to help the school.
This is something I can do right now,"
explained Mr. Russell.
By the middle of the fall semester of
1978, what was once just an idea began to
take shape. With the assistance of
Associate Dean Norvie L. Lay and Steve
Bing, Vice President University Relations
Office, the specific details of the Fund were
worked out, and the University's Legal Af­fairs
Department drew up the trust agree­ment.
The decision to go ahead with the
Fund was made, according to Mr. Golliher,
because of the need and the thought that
their classmates would support the idea.
The new scholarship fund won't come a
minute too soon. About three years ago, U
of L's law school was subject to a routine
inspection by an American Bar Association
(ABA) accreditation team. According to a
synopsis of the report submitted to the Ac­creditation
Committee of the ABA's Sec­tion
of Legal Education and Admissions to
the Bar, the law school was guilty of viola­tions
of ABA standards. They felt the
School of Law lacked adequate resources
for law student financial aid.
ABA officials have noted that an accept­able
level of funding would offer financial
assistance to 10-20 percent of the law
school student body. This year's total
amount available for law student financial
aid, when fully dispersed, will assist less
than 10 percent of the current student body
of the law school.
After May I, 1985, the annual income of
the Fund will be dispersed in the form of
full in-state tuition scholarships awarded to
full-time junior and senior law students at
the University of Louisville. Recipients of
the scholarships will be selected solely on
the basis of academic achievement and will
be chosen from the junior and senior
classes in equal numbers by the Scholarship
Committee of the Law School.
(Continued on page 8)
2 Louis,·ille taw Examiner, January 30, 1979
Louisville Law Examiner
EDITORIAL BOARD
Susan Turner Barnett, Co-Editor-in Chief
Valerie Salven, Co-Editor-in-Chief
Shaun Esposito. Associate Editor
Schuyler Olt, Associate Editor
Elizabeth Ward, Business Mana~er
STAFF
Greg Yopp, City Editor
Bruce Dudley, Brandeis Brief Editor
Jerry Adair, News Editor
Sam Carl, Projects Editor
Rick Masters, Articles Editor
Jerome A. Mirabito, Executive Editor
Judge MARLIN M. VOLZ, Advisor
Pat Chism, Ph11to~rapher
Gerald F. "Bear" Schray. Artist
John Greenup, Asst. Business Mana~er
frank Burnette
Kenneth W. Golliher
Professor ALBERT T. QUICK, Consultant
The Louisville Law Examiner is published ei~hl times durin~ the academic year in the
interest of the University of Louisville School of Law community. Unsi~ned editorial opinions
are those representing a majority vote of the editorial board and do not necessarily express the
views of the School of Law or the University of Louisville.
Articles are invited from faculty members, students, and members of the bar who wish to do
freelance work, but any proposed article must be cleared in advance with the editor as to topic
and length. This is to avoid duplication of coverage and insure that the article will not be
beyond workable length for a newspaper format.
Addres all communications lo the Louisville Law Examiner. School of Law, University of
Loui ville, Louisville, Kentucky 40208. Phone 502-588-6399.
Editorial
Student Effort Creates
Lasting Benefit to School
Thanks to some members of this year's
senior class, in the future there will be more
scholarships available to reward academic
achievement. More than 20 seniors have
pledged $1000 each to the Marlin Volz
Scholarship Fund, and a $15,000 contribu­tion
has come from an alumnus. Scholar­ships
from this fund will be awarded to
recognize academic achievement beginning
in 1985.
Until now, scholar hips for pure
academic achievement could be haritably
called meager. And, though students,
faculty, administration and even the ac­creditation
teams have criticized thi itua­tion,
it has generally been said that probabl
nothing could be done about it.
But three students, on their own in-itiative,
found something to do about it.
They accomplished their goal, and it wasn't
nearly as difficult as one might have believed.
The important thing is that someone cared
enough to take a positive step and make it
work.
It is a telling comment on something that
it took the effort of students to create thi
long-term benefit for the Ia'>' chool. It i
al o telling that it i expressly prm.ided in
the tru t agreement that no a tion of the
School of La'>' shall alter the charitable
purpose of the fund.
Though these actions of the seniors make
for a tough a t to follow, the upcoming
cla es ought to try.
To tho e' ho created and pledged to the
fund-Thanks!
Indictn1ents &
Accolades
An ACCOLADE-to the SBA, Jaw school
administration and staff, and others for
efforts to shorten the class registration pro­cedure
for the School of Law this semester.
An INDICTMENT -to whoever failed to
arrange for last semester's grades to be
available to students in time for the first
day of registration this semester.
An ACCOLADE-to the law school admini­stration
for heeding student requests to of­fer
the Trial Practice course again this
semester, and for locating an attorney to
teach it, since the professor who usually
teaches it is handling other course this
semester.
An INDICTMENT -to the hard-line, in­flexible
attitude that the law school ad­ministration
has taken toward the enforce­ment
of (some) rules against (some)
students at the School of Law this year,
which prompted one administrator to tell a
student that attendance at the funeral of
the student's grandmother would not
qualify as an acceptable excuse for his
absence from class. (After all, the rules say an
absence is an absence.)
An ACCOLADE-,-to the Moot Court Board
for giving out the spring moot court pro­blems
to the first-year students early this
year.
An INDICTMENT -for the poor planning
of faculty leaves, etc. which has resulted in
several abnormally large classes for bar
courses this semester due to the shortage of
professors to teach them.
An ACCOLADE-to the mysterious "bulle­tin
board stripper," for clearing the
old out-of-date notices and propaganda
from the school's bulletin boards and walls
(including the "this person has an overdue
book" notices).
An INDICTMENT -to the mysterious "bul­letin
board stripper," for taking down even
the useful signs, such as the tennis pairings
and signs which state, "This Door is
Broken."
An ACCOLADE-to all the students and
elves who agree to work at the library cir­culation
desk during evenings and week­ends
so that it can be kept open at
hours other than 8-5, Monday through Fri­day.
An INDICTMENT -to the Law School Pigs
who leave countless coffee cups and candy
wrappers on tables, chairs and floors
throughout the School of Law. (And you
know who you are, oink, oink.)
((Brandeis Brief'' Series
The Legal Profession
Law-Related Education
Teaches Citizenship Skills
Governor Scott M. Matheson of Utah was
an honors graduate of the University of Utah,
where he received his B.S. in Political Science
in 1950. He received his Juris Doctor ·from
Stanford Law School in 1952. His 25 years
of legal experience includes serving as
deputy county attorney, law clerk to the
U.S. District Judge in Salt Lake, and
counsel to the Anaconda Company and the
Union Pacific Railroad Company, as well
as private practice. He was the youngest
president of the Utah State Bar, from 1968
to 1969. He has also served as Bar Com­missioner
and Young Lawyers Section
chairman for the state bar. Since 1972, he
has been chairman of the Law Related
Education Committee. He is also vice­chairman
of the Youth Education for
Citizenship Committee of the ABA. He has
been active in the Democratic party for 30
years and was elected governor in 1977.
by Governor Scott M. Matheson
We Ia yers think of ourselve as one of the most misunderstood groups in our
ociety. We believe the law is an honorable profession which seeks justice and
provides a mechanism for a better society, but many people just don't see it that
way. The average person's idea of what a lawyer does is not more sophisticated
than what is presented on Perry Mason and other TV shows. Moreover, polls
repeatedly show that people don't understand or trust lawyers. In almost every
sampling of public opinion, our profession ranks far down in public confidence
and trust, sharing the bottom rank with used car salesmen, politicians and other
low-lifes.
That misunderstanding is naturally unfortunate for us, but I think it is even
worse for the American people. All of us live in an increasingly law-saturated
society in which the law has become more and more the paramount means of
ordering our priorities and bringing about change. Legislatures are busier than
ever, regulatory bodies more active, the courts more crowded with law suits. In a
society such as ours, if people fear the law and lawyers, if they don't understand
the role of law in defining and preserving basic values, and if they don't know
how to cope with the law in their daily lives, then they are hampered in their exer­cise
of citizenship-and our nation is deprived of the informed voice of the
citizenry.
Law-related education was created to build bridges between the legal profes­sion
and nonlawyers, to help de-mystify the Jaw and prepare young people for the
exercise of knowledgeable citizenship. The American Bar Association (ABA)
became involved in 1971, under the leadership of then-President Leon Jaworski.
With the ABA's help as a catalyst and with the support of bar associations and
law schools around the country, lawyers, judges, probation officers and others
from the community in every state have come together with teachers and other
educators to create programs which teach elementary and secondary students
about the Jaw, legal processes and the legal system.
In Kentucky, the s~ate bar association, the state department of education,
lawyers' wives groups and many others are engaged in creating curricula and form­ulating
educational programs. The aim isn't to make these young people
amateur lawyers or to prepare them for a career in law; rather, it is to increase
their understanding and give them skills which will help them become
knowledgeable, active and concerned citizens.
Citizenship education is one of the basic purposes of American education. The
vast majority of states already require education about the federal and state con­stitutions,
American history and American government. Yet there is plenty of
evidence to indicate that students just aren't learning these important lessons.
For example, a recent study by the U.S. Office of Education shows that most
Americans have difficulty determining whether a given action is legal. More than
half have difficulty recognizing guarantees from the Bill of Rights. In fact, in
another study, when people were shown the guarantees from the Bill of Rights
but not told where they were from, many not only failed to recognize them but
described them as "communist propaganda."
These are studies of adults, but research conducted on students-kids who are
in school and exposed to citizenship courses-shows the same dismal pattern. A
recent nationwide survey by the National Assessment of Educational Progress
revealed that during the first half of the 1970s American teenagers showed
(Continued on page II)
Mea Culpa
Due to an editing error, a quota­tion
from Associate Dean Norvie Lay,
which appeared in a page one story
about class rankings in our Nov. 21
issue, was jumbled. It should have
read, "It was the feeling of the com­mittee
that instead of separate scho­larships
for day and evening, those
individuals having completed com­parable
numbers of hours would
receive the scholarships based on be­ing
number one or number two ir­respective
of whether they had com­pleted
this in the day or evening divi­sion."
Letter to
the Editors
Dear Editors:
When I graduated from the law school in
1951 at least 50 percent of the students
worked outside. The number of graduates
who passed the bar was.in excess of 95 per­cent.
The highest levels of educational
achievement, as evidenced by law school
standings and grades on the bar (grades
were revealed then) were by students who
worked.
One might suggest that "big brother"
look to other ontrol . Maybe the sex
life i the culprit and should be controlled.
Perhap a requirement of home curfew or
the number of hours of sleep should be
specified. Maybe the culprit is social as­sociation
and a check should be made of
mother , fathers, girl friends, the places
where tudent gather and the types of con­versation
they indulge in . After uch an
analy i , order could be ut accordingly.
The real wonder of it all, \\ith the level
of intellect in the law school leadership
indicated by the "big brother" rule, is that
any of the tudents receive sufficient intelli­gent
in !ruction to pass the bar.
Incidentally, I wonder if con titutional
law on ept are taught and if o, who i
possibly teaching them .
Your very truly,
Thomas L. Ray
February, 1951
In his column in rhe December issue of
tudent La" yer, Bureon Ledbe({er, presi­dent
of the Law Student Division of the
American Bar Association, reported that he
has been requested by the Standards Re­view
Committee of the Section on Legal
Education and Admissions ro the Bar to
provide advice and comments regarding the
" 15-hour rule." This letter, as well as
those previously received and our editorial
of Oct. 3, 1978, has been forwarded to Mr.
Ledbetter. -Eds.
News -In- Brief
The Louisville Law Forum has elected
new officers. They are: Robert J. Hines,
president; Tom McDonald, vice-president;
Mike Khouri, secretary; and David Rhiner­son,
treasurer.
Evening division student David Banks
has been elected president of the Louisville
Board of Aldermen. Alderman Banks repre­sents
the Sixth Ward.
Delta Theta Phi legal fraternity has
selected new officers. They are: Lisa Linde­man,
dean; Marianna Gordon, vice-dean;
Dave McKenna, tribune; Schuyler Olt, clerk
of the exchequer; John Tobin, master of .
the rolls; Richard Hill, master of the ritual;
Steve Arnett, master schofar; Udell Levy,
bailiff; and Margaret Kramer, social chair­person.
Louisville Law Examiner, January 30, 1979 3
/ 7 I I \ -------
Inflation ups price of fame and glory
What price glory?
At the Western New England College
School of Law (WNEC/SL) in Springfield,
Massachusetts, the price for a little fame
and glory in your own lifetime has been set
at one million dollars.
The tudent new paper of W EC/ SL,
Lex Brevis, recently reported that the presi­dent
of WNEC has offered to name the
WNEC School of Law after anyone who
will donate one million dollars to the
school. The dean of WNEC/ SL, Howard
K!ilodner, said that although it would be
nice if the donor were a member of the legal
community, this is not a requirement. The
money will be used to establish an endow­ment
fund for the law school.
Dean Kalodner said that if a million
dollar donor is not found, he is not sure
how a new name for the school will be
chosen. But Dean Kalodner added that the
college president is "absolutely persuaded
that someone may come along; he's unwil­ling
to give it away and forfeit a possible
donor."
One million dollars is a lot, but con­sider
the price Harry paid for fame and
glory at the University of Montana.
Students and graduates of the Univer-sity
of Montana Law School have
established a scholarship fund in memory
of their favorite student who was a victim
of a hit-and-run motorist.
Harry Robb, who matriculated with the
class of 1977, was remembered as one who
spent more time in the law library than
most of the other students. His other
idiosyncrasies endeared him to his fellow
classmates.
Harry was a cat.
The Student Bar Association is receiving
contributions to the "Harry the Cat"
scholarship fund.
Group Wants to HALT Legal Tyranny
by Ken Golliher
Mr. Golliher is a third-year student who
has done extensive graduate work in public
relations. The opinions expressed in this
article are his own. -Eds.
If there is one powerful elite in America,
shaping the country according to its own
single perspective, it must be the legal pro­fession.
In general, it is becoming less and
less responsible to the people of the
democracy it is supposed to serve.
-Matt Valencic-
At least once a year a major pollster ex­trapolates
and publicizes the opinion of the
American people on the public image of
various occupations. Lawyers seem to have
a lock on a niche that falls somewhere be­tween
politicians and aluminum siding
salesmen.
Now, it would be a shame to let all that
public animosity and distrust go to waste,
especially in "the era of the special interest
group." Well, it isn't wasted.
The speaker quoted above, Matthew
Valencic, is the director of a Washington,
D.C. based organization called Help
Abolish Legal Tyranny (HALT). (It was
originally styled Help Abolish Legal
Thievery, but apparently the organizers
thought better of it.)
HALT literature contains extensive com­mentary
on the legal profession and its
members. Its editorial bent and tactics are
consistent. Laced with quotes from Chief
Justice Burger, Justice Brandeis and Presi-dent
Carter, the party line runs something
like this:
Attorneys have forsaken the public trust
and are largely responsible for the current
abuses of the legal system. While some
"good" lawyers do exist, most have
adopted the profit motive as their compel­ling
interest in the practice of law.
"The best lawyers gravitate towards
prestigious firms and large corporations,
often leaving the least competent attorneys
to handle the legal needs of the average
citizen."
Bar disciplinary actions are perceived as
a farce perpetrated on the public in an ef­fort
to preserve a facade of self regulation
in the public interest.
"The incidence of incompetence and
unethical conduct within the legal profes­sion
is unjustifiably excessive. It is an insult
to the profession and the nation ... only a
miniscule number of lawyers charged with
malpractice or unethical conduct are ever
publicly disciplined."
Lawyers habitually and through self- in­terest
alone fight no-fault legislation regar­ding
insurance and divorce, as well as
legislation aimed at simplifying and
decreasing the expense of settling estates.
"Lawyers refuse to relinquish their
monopolies on title searches, probate,
-divorce, accident claims, malpractice
charges, and more. The vast majority of
lawyers never will support reforms that
serve consumers by eliminating unneces-sary-
but lucrative-legal procedures and
fees." ,
While lawyers are the most highly visible
focal points of HALT's efforts, it has other
enunciated goals. Among its announced
objectives are:
-Abolition of what it terms "the
American Rule," the policy that each party
to a lawsuit must pay his own attorney's
fees. "HALT believes that legal fees should
be awarded to beleaguered victors of
frivolous law suits."
-Pushing the FTC to investigate the
costs of legal services and the regulatory ·
and disciplinary procedures of the legal
profession.
-Promotion of greater awareness on the
part of the consumers of legal services
through educational activities conducted
by state and local offices of the organiza­tion.
These offices could advise the public
when and where to seek legal advice, as
well as look over the shoulder of the local
bar in its disciplinary procedures.
-Lobbying for reform in probate and
divorce laws, again using the local offices
as a base of operations.
With this list of objectives you would
think that HALT is an organization with
unlimited supporters and a bottomless cash
box. It isn't.
According to an article in the National
Law Journal, HALT's office is on the
second floor of a sparsely furnished Capitol
(Continued on page 12)
4
Law Review
Membership
Evaluated,
Most Comment
Favorably
by Elizabeth Ward
Each spring first-year day division
students and second-year evening division
students are extended an invitation to com­pete
for candidacy on the University of
Louisville Journal of Family Law. Selec­tion
is based on a balance between scho­lastic
achievement and writing ability. In­terested
students complete a writing assign­ment
given to them by the Journal editors
who evaluate the writing samples along
with the students' grade point averages and
extend invitation of candidacy to meritorious
applicants.
The candidacy last approximately one
year, during which time, under the present
program, the candidate submits two case
notes, several "recent cases" and one stu­dent
note, which fulfills the school'
writing requirement. Candidates also as i t
in publishing the Journal by proofreading
and cite-checking.
Among the benefits of Journal member­hip
is receipt of academic credit, as much
as six credits if one becomes the editor-in­chief
during the two year period.
'The abo e is the usual PR about
membership on a Ia"' re ie . In summar
the benefits to Journal membership are
prestige, employment opportunity, academic
credit and opportunity to publish, resulting
in a type of elitism, as seen from the
perspective of the first-year students. More
informative, believable, and hopefully
more interesting are the responses made by
present and past members of various law
reviews and the comments of a student who
was eligible, but didn't join the Journal of
Family Law:
Steve Berg: Third-year student, editor­in-
chief of U of L Journal of Family Law:
"It's an awful lot of work; quite a drain
on time. The nature of the work is all
inclusive-editing, writing, research, plan­ning,
partying, layout-all but the printing
process is done here in the office. It's a
business, same as running a magazine.
Sometimes I'm here all day (24 hours);
usually, I am in the office 30 hours a week,
but not always working. On a resume the
Journal makes a lot of difference; it's the
standard for the legal profession every­where.
It's an honor; being editor-in-chief
is a big honor.
"The experience is bound to - should
anyway-help anyone who goes through it.
Editing gives increased exposure to trends
in the law. The first year consists mainly of
writing experience, using tools, the library.
The second year involves running the Jour­nal,
overseeing candidates. A new board of
editors selected from people who are already
Journal members will be in charge of the
selection process of the freshmen. Last year
we gave all interested people a sample
case, plus other cases applicable. Five
pages of the freshmen's original analyses
were evaluated along with their grade point
averages."
Phil Warf: Mid-year graduate, notes
editor:
"The most beneficial aspect of belonging
to the Journal staff is learning the practical
aspects of law by research not tied to
special courses; it gives advance knowledge
in some areas. Every federal application
Louisville Law Examiner, January 30, 1979
Photo /11· Pat C"hi~m
Another new rt>t!i,tralion prm·t>durt' "a' lrit>d lhi- 'emt">ter. o\llea,f for ,fudenh for prt•-re!(i,ft•n•£1 it wurked beller: fur other' it na' ,fill a ha"l•·- EHn
mild-mannered l)a,id Rhiner-un !!Of a lillie impatient after ··Tal..e a tid..el. tal..e a t':IL .. I ht•n• ;, no truth In thr rumor that a ,ltutrnf', ret:i,fratinn nill ht•
•·am·etled for failure to return the hlael.. pen nhit·h na prmidt'l1 "ilh lht• n •t:i,fralion pad..t•f
ask about journal experience; it's almo t a
requirement. Member hip denote high
honors-grade and writing ability. I've
enjoyed it. It's a lot of work, more work
than any other extra-curricular program.
Major law firms want law review experi­ence
to show writing ability, but small
towns, rural or family firms may not con­sider
journal experience important. The
time element is the only aspect of concern,
maybe-3-4 hours a week at a bare minimum
as a candidate; much more time is involved
in the editorial jobs. There's some social
benefit too-much interaction between the
classes. The law review is a lot of work, but
in the long run it was worth it. I put a lot
into it, but got more out of it."
Assistant Professor Linda Ewald: Past
associate managing editor U of L Journal of
Family Law:
"Journal membership is the one way
potential employers can evaluate your law
school career. It's pretty much a standard
practice to limit membership to the top
15-20 percent of the class. Personally, it
gave me the opportunity to do in-depth re­search
under semi-superv1s1on. Moot
court was the only opportunity for the rest
of the class to delve into the books. With
the Journal comes some recognition for
publication. It's the biggest consideration
for getting into graduate law school-class
rank and law review. Of course, it was time
consuming-four to five hours a week­most
students prefer to work for compen­sation
and there are some excellent stu­dents
who haven't been on it."
P.rofessor Laurence Knowles: Past editor
of Rutgers Law Journal, present advisor to
U of L Journal of Family Law, present
editor of Journal of Law and Education:
"Journal membership is prestigious-firm
members regard it highly; it's excellent for
employment. The research is far more
demanding than the other students get in­volved
in ... it emphasizes creative
research. Communication skills are em­phasized
in so far as writing is subject to
the scrutiny of peers. The third positive
aspect is that the students' material is
published in a national journal which in­creases
the employment opportunity.
Government units ask for a sample of
published writings. Some of the work is
tedious - footnote checking, spading
ani les-a lot of law i tedious. Conse­quently,
it builds the ability to deal with
tedium, but disciplines to do so. Let's say it
enhances the tedium tolerance level, makes
a better researcher. This is not really bad,
but it i the hardest part of working on a
journal."
Honorable Ellen Ewing: District Court
Judge, past co-editor of Recent Develop­ments,
U of L Journal of Family Law:
"I enjoyed the work, but I appreciated it
more afterwards. It was hairy at times,
working at night as well. I'm not sure of the
benefits, if there is a direct proportion be­tween
my position and membership on the
Journal ... not sure if it's been a great
help for employment; I'm not consciously
aware, if it was. It was a worthwhile ex­perience
as far as time. I don't regret it­wouldn't
discourage anyone. The research
and attention to form writing and style
were beneficial."
Creighton Mershon: Attorney, past
editor-in-chief, U of L Journal of Family
Law:
"It was a valuable experience. Advisor
William Read and the Journal did more for
my legal writing ability than any law
course-writing notes, editing and re­editing
notes over and over-gave some
real assistance in precise writing. It was most
beneficial in that it gave the opportunity to
do legal research, analyze recent decisions.
That's legal work ... invaluable ... what
people pay you to do. The Journal takes a
lot of time, involves exercises that help you
be a lawyer; students should grab each and
every experience to be a lawyer; it's a
practical kind of experience. Law clerking
is a similar experience, but lacks oversight."
Rebecca Westerfield: Attorney, past
editor of Kentucky Law Journal:
"Journal membership certainly helps
develop and hone up research skills.
There's a prestige value, but the problem
for me is that in a solo practice, it's mean­ingless.
It only matters if you're out after a
major firm or corporation; otherwise it's
unimportant. I found moot court a far
more practical experience. The Journal was
so academic and I'm not really sure it's
worth the time-an incredible amount of
time. It's the only mechanism for prestige.
Journal was a good forum for speaking my
mind on issues of personal interest. My
first article on Title VII won an award for
the best comment, but the time devoted to
the ·Journal was disproportionate ·to the
benefits. Clerking or moot court should be
stressed. U of K's moot court is extensive
and I was the only member of the National
Moot Court Team who was also on the
Journal. I found moot court to be more
beneficial."
Assistant Professor Ronald Eades: Past
editor of Memphis State Law Journal:
"Several things are beneficial about being
on a journal: the writing requires ex­perience
with research and cite-checking;
journal membership forces you to research
and write; academically, it's the best ex­perience;
it's also an honor as well as a
learning experience. The strongest pro, in
addition to the learning experience is that
it's with other students-not the same
pressure as for grades. It's a lot of addi­tional
work, however. It couldn't be a good
learning experience otherwise. Lawyers are
more impressed with journal mj:mbership
than anything else; it's so well-recognized
in the profession, prospective employers
know the standard. In the instance of
becoming a professor, the experience is
expected-assumed-and if you're not a
member, you're asked why not. Overall, it's
a valuable experience."
Don Becher: Second-year student, invited
but did not join the Journal staff:
"At the time, I wasn't particularly in­terested
in the topic of family law-a lot of
people are not interested in domestic
cases ... I heard they did a dog-bite case,
really "reaching." After researching
federal jobs, I find it's a definite plus to
have been on it. I have to qualify my earlier
statements because I don't know the value,
having not been on it. A lot of people (and
employers) think you're lazy if you weren't
on it and could have been. Last year, we
got the invitation, but no one really ex­plained
the importance of the Journal to
the future. I would try to impress freshmen
to try out. I guess I have nothing against it:
I might apply for next year. I'm a better ex­ample
of someone who has changed his
mind."
Louisville Law Examiner, J11nuary 30, 1979 5
Curriculum Committee
Proposes More Changes
A first-year curriculum without Legal
Methods? This question is presently under
consideration by the Curriculum Commit­tee.
According to Chairman Professor
Ralph Petrilli, the Curriculum Committee
considered this and several other important
issues last semester.
"A resolution was put in and debated
and the conclusion was to table it," Prof.
Petrilli said of the resolution to remove the
Legal Methods course from the first-year
curriculum. Part of the reason for tabling
the resolution, Prof. Petrilli added, was
to give committee members time to decide
what course could replace the Legal
Methods class in order to give the fresh­men
a "full load."
Prof. Petrilli said that the resolution will
be brought up again in the future. He
hopes that the student representatives on
the committee will bring in the student
viewpoint on the resolution at that time.
Steven Berg, a student representative on
the committee, said that he has several con­cepts
on which he would like to work in
deciding what course could replace Legal
Methods. He hopes to have suggestions for
the next meeting of the Curriculum Com­mittee.
Second-year student Tip Richmond also
serves on the committee.
Another resolution which was con-idered
by the committee and subseq uently
appro ed by the faculty may have a signifi­cant
influence on student schedules in up­coming
seme ters. Most three credit hour
classes, instead of meeting twice a week for
75 minutes per meeting as is the current
practice, will meet three times a week for 50
minutes per meet in~.
"It i a question of ho\\ it i better to
teach the paru ular ubject," Prof. Petrilli
~• . The .ndi idual prof~ or and o­ciate
Dean orvie Lay will decide whether
it is feasible to teach the particular class
three time per week.
The 50-minute chedule is not man­datory,
Prof. Petrilli added, but there is a
presumption that the three meetings per
week schedule is preferable. Prof. Petrilli
finally noted that scheduling problems will
have to be resolved to accommodate the in­creased
use of class space.
JAMES P. QUEENAN
2509 Savannah Road
Louisville, KY 40222
(502) 425-2174
THE LAWYERS
CO-OPERATIVE
PUBLISHING COMPANY
II II
LCp
A resolution that would require second­year
students to take certain classes in
order to graduate failed to pass the Cur­riculum
Committee. The resolution would
have required the following courses for
graduation: Constitutional Law II,
Evidence, Remedies, Corporations, Tax I
& II, Administrative Law, and Legislation.
The second-year curriculum is currently
totally elective, according to Prof. Petrilli.
"Some of these courses should be re­quired,"
Prof. Petrilli contended, "on the
theory that no matter how you practice
law, whether you practice as in-house
counsel for an insurance company or you
represent the American Indian tribes in the
Massachusetts cases, there is a certain core
amount of information that no matter how
you practice law, all lawyers must have
some contact with."
Prof. Petrilli, in putting together the
resolution, felt that the courses included
are essential to the practice of law in any
area a student may choose.
Mr. Berg explained that he voted against
the resolution because he believes that
students are responsible enough to take
care of their own scheduling needs. He added
that he does not see why one "bar course"
should be distinguished from another.
Some students may not wish to be in­volved
with certain areas after graduation
and they should not be required to take
classes in those areas, Mr. Berg maintained.
The majority of the students take the
courses anyway, he concluded.
Prof. Petrilli mentioned that the resolu­tion
will be reconsidered at the end of the
year. Students and other members of the
law school may wish to express opinions on
the proposal before that time.
In its report released in December, the
d Hoc Commiuee to tudy the July 1978
Bar Examination Re ult con luded that
the pass rate for graduates who had taken
all or most of the "bar courses" tended to
be higher than for those who had taken
fewer of these courses. Because, however,
most students take most of the bar courses
and no one course appears to be critical to
passing the bar, the committee recom­mended
that the faculty not adopt a re­quirement
such as the one proposed. See
related story on page 6.
The Law
in Breadth
AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE 2d
- An encyclopedic A-Z text
statement of the complete body
of law - state and federal, civil
and criminal, substantive and
procedural. Here you'll find the
principles of law plus direct
leads to the supporting cases,
related annotations , forms,
proofs, and trial techniques. Use
it as your first search source in
office consultations, solving tax
problems, trial preparation, brief
writing.
0 authoritative treatises on
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0 cases from all jurisdictions
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0 New Topic service.
The f .'xaminer is luukin~t fur a few serious students to join I he slaff. Membership on !he slaff re­quires
a professional demeanor and dedkalinn In hard wnrk. Piclured abnve is Ginny Hamm,
la s! semesler's business mana~ter. whn ~traduated in llecember. We are searchin~t fnr nlhers nf
her t·aliber. If ~nu are inleresled and lhink ~· nu t·an measure up In the slandards we have set,
whkh are sn aplly personified b~· Ms. Hamm, slnp by nur nffice in I he Pnverl)' Annex any lime.
Justice Palmore Suggests
Better Distribution of Judges
Franldort,-Idec.lly, the number of
district judges assigned to an area should
be based on population, not on the case­load,
John S. Palmore, chief justice of the
Kentucky Supreme Court, said last month.
Chief Justice Palmore had been asked by
the prosecutors subcommittee of the Task
Force to Study the Commonwealth's Legal
System to comment both on a proposal to
change the number of district judges and a
proposal for a single prosecutorial system
as opposed to the present dual system.
Although the Supreme Court has stated
that it is not mandatory that "one man,
one vote" be carried over to "one man, one
court" that is still a fundamental principle,
said Chief Justice Palmore. The chief
justice suggested that 40,000 people per
court would be a good rule-of-thumb if it
did not mean cutting across county lines.
In any event, each county should have at
least one court, he added.
Chief Justice Palmore said the present
number of judges is close to the number of
district judges "that the job calls for," and
any inequality in caseload could be ad­justed
by judges with lighter schedules
assisting in areas with heavier caseloads.
Judges "moving back and forth" when
necessary to share heavy caseloads in cer­tain
regions would be cheaper than adding
a second judge when only one and a half is
needed, Chief Justice Palmore said. In ad­dition,
there would be another advantage
in that judges would often be holding court
in neighboring counties where they would
not be subject to political pressures present
in home counties, he said.
The chief justice cautioned against
redistricting as an alternative. Redistricting
is "a can of worms ... trouble for the
legislature . .. trouble for anybody . .. "
he said.
Concerning the proposed single pro­secutorial
system, Chief Justice Palmore
said he favors one full-time prosecutor who
is free from ties with anyone, and respon­sible
only to the people who elected him .
There are several ways this could be ac­complished,
he said.
Presently, Kentucky has a dual system of
local prosecution with felonies prosecuted
in the circuit court by Commonwealth's at­torneys,
and misdemeanors and felony
preliminary hearings prosecuted in the
various lower courts by municipal pro­secutors
and by the elected county at­torneys,
who also have extensive civic
duties. It has been suggested that this dual
system be unified into a single office.
In another matter, a subcommittee
member asked the chief justice what he
thought was the greatest weakness in the
criminal justice system.
"At the risk of sounding facetious, the
men sitting in nine chairs in Washington,
D.C. (are the greatest weakness)," said
Chief Justice Palmore. For example, a
decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that
state-funded attorneys must be provided
for if necessary even in a traffic ticket case
will be expensive both in time and money,
he said.
In a related matter, Chief Justice
Palmore told a legislative committee
January 5th that he would like to see a
schedule of traffic fines implemented in
which tiY. ~<ne is the total amount paid.
The $27 .51) court costs added to the fine,
not the fine itself, is "the most hurtful
thing" financially and he would like those
costs eliminated, the chief justice said. This
figure has been determined arbitrarily since
it would be difficult to assess the actual
courts costs, he added.
The chief justice of the Kentucky
Supreme Court, several district judges, and
State Police Commissioner Kenneth E.
Branden burgh, had been asked to comment
concerning traffic fines and citations in the
state before the Interim Joint Committee
on Highways and Traffic Safety. Restruc­turing
the traffic fine schedule is on the
special session agenda.
Palmore also said he favors removal of
the $15 increase in Kentucky minimum
traffic fines which became effective June
17, 1978 under House Bill234.
6 Louisville Law Examiner, January 30, 1979
Cornn1ittee Studies Bar Performance Statistics
by Valerie Salven
After more than a month's work devis­ing
a suitable questionnaire and placing
telephone calls to 100 of the 116 U of L
School of Law graduates who took the July
1978 Kentucky Bar Examination, as well as
compiling data from student records and
other sources, the Ad Hoc Committee to
Study the July 1978 Bar Examination
Results released a 41-page report in early
December.
Some of the results of the study were
predicted, but others came as a surprise.
Students with high law school grade point
averages (GPA's) for instance, were found
to be more likely to pass the examination
than those with low GPA's, but it was also
discovered that students who worked more
than 15 hours a week while in school (full­time
or part-time division) were more likely
to pass than those who did not work at all.
The committee made some recommenda­tions
to the faculty as a result of the study,
but in the introduction to tl:te report cau­tioned
that "If this investigation is to be
meaningful, the investigative process must
be repeated following the bar examinations
in 1979 and beyond." .
The special committee was formed to in­vestigate
why U of L graduates made a
poor showing for a third consecutive time
on the Kentucky Bar Examination. The
passing percentage for U of L graduates on
the most recent examination was only 70
percent-a lower pass rate than either of
the other two Kentucky law schools and
lower than the passing percentage for bar
applicants who had attended out-of-state
law schools. The chairman of the commit­tee
is Associate Professor Leslie W.
Abramson, and the other commiuee
members are Associate Professor Albert T .
Quick, Associate Dean Steven R. Smith,
second-year students Bruce K. Dudley and
James C. Seiffert, and third-year student
Scott Preston.
The committee was assisted in its work
by two U of L mathematics professors, law
school staff, and a group of second- and
third-year law students who helped make
the telephone calls to the graduates. This
article is a summary of the information
contained in the committee report; the full
report is available at the library reserve
desk of the School of Law.
The report is prefaced with several
caveats, including one that the reader
should consider the percentages reflected in
specific tables in light of the number of
students represented in a given category­i.
e. , a figure of 50 percent in one category
may be based on one of only two persons
within the category. The pass rate for full­time
division students, the report noted,
was 74 percent (64 of 86 applicants passed).
The pass rate for the part-time division of
the School of Law was 60 percent (18 of 30
applicants passed).
The best predictor of success on the bar
examination for U of L graduates who
took the July 1978 examination was the
graduate's grade point average in law
school (see table 1). An effort was made to
determine whether there was any correla­tion
between the student's law school GPA
and his LSAT score as a predictor of suc­cess
on the bar examination; the correla­tion
between undergraduate GPA and
LSAT scores in predicting success on the
Table 1
Grade Point Average in Law School,
by pass rate
G.P.A.
2.0 -2.20
2.21-2.50
2.51-2.80
2.81-3.00
Above 3.00
Pass rate
330fo (5 of 15)
40% (10of25)
8111fo (29 of 36)
90% (18 of20)
100% (20of20)
Table 2
July, 1?78 b,ar passra,te
LSATscore
'~ Law School G.P.A. Below400 400-450 451 -SOO 501-550 ...,.
2.00-2.20 0% (I of l) 50% {l of2) 33% (1 of 3)
2.21 -2.50 100% (I of I) 500Jo ( 1 of 2) 500/o ( 1 of 2) 0% (0 of5)
2.51 -2.80 0% (Oof I) 100% (3 of3) 64% (7 of 11)
2.81-3.00 100% (4of4)
Above 3.00 100%
Total 50% (I of2) 33% (1 of3) 72% (5 of7) 560fo (14 of 25)
bar exam ina ·tion was also considered . The
committee found that there was an
"uneven" or inconsistent correlation be­tween
the LSAT and undergraduate GPA
and later bar examination success, and that
"This may suggest that the traditional
'numbers game' for admissions should be
reconsidered , or at least supplemented with
other factors."
A more positive correlation was found
between LSAT scores and law school
GPA's, however (see table 2) and it was
found that as a student's LSAT scores in ­creases,
the GPA becomes more important
as an indicator of the student's liklihood of
passing the bar examination (see table 3). A
matrix similar to that shown in table 2 was
made for the February 1978 and July 1977
bar examination , and all indicated that the
pass rate for U of L graduates is very low
when the GPA is 2.50 or below and par­ticularly
low when the GPA is 2.20 or
below, regardless of the student's LSAT
score.
TabkJ
Averag~ Law School G.P.A. of Graduates
Wbo Passed or Failed, by LSAT Score
Average G.P.A.
for Graduates
Passing
Average G.P.A.
for Graduates
Failing
'"*--~'"'··' "
Graduates who were on probation or
were dismissed at some point in their law
school careers under the grading system
presently in effect at the School of Law did
poorly on the examination as a group. Of
18 applicants from U of L who had a pro­bation
and/ or dismissal history, only two
passed. In other words, 16 of the 34 U of L
graduates who fail~d the most recent bar
examination fell within this category. The
report noted, however, that until the
1977-78 academic year, the Faculty Proba­tion
and Reinstatement Committee had no
limitations on the number of times a stu­dent
could be readmitted or continued on
probation. New, more restrictive rules were
adopted in 1977 to govern probation and
readmission, and the impact of these rules
as regards the bar examination results will
not be known for another year or two.
One of the more interesting discoveries of
the committee, as far as the student body
was concerned, was the effect that working
while in school had on a student's chances
of passing the bar examination. It was
found that the number of graduates who
had worked during their law school years
was greater than expected-out of 110
graduates for whom information en this sub­ject
was obtained, 93, or 85 percent of them,
worked during law school (of the six
graduates for whom information was not
available, three passed and three failed) .
Table 5 shows the pass rate for all U of L
graduates based on whether they worked
during school or not; Table 7 breaks the
statistics down according to whether they
were in the full-time or part-time division. In
either division, the pass rate for the
graduates who had worked was greater than
the 59 percent pass rate recorded by those
who did not work. "At the very least,"
the report stated, "it can be concluded
dduringlaw$cho
not work during .ro\0
law school
All U of L graduates,
July 1978 bar 7L% (82 of 116)
'"'
LSATnange
Under475
475-675
Above675
2.375
2.797
2.920
2.335
2.365
2.347 Students Desire Earlier Bar Review?
It was suggested that a more finite
grading system-i.e., one that gives a stu­dent
more quality points for a "C plus"
than for a grade of "C"-could prevent
potential bar failures from graduating if
such a system were adopted by the faculty
in lieu of the present system. Under the pre­sent
system, a student with a "C minus"
average has a GPA of 2.00, as does the stu­dent
with a "solid C" average. Under one
of the more finite systems of grading sug­gested
by the committee, however, (one of
the suggested systems is shown in table 4) a
"C minus" might be worth only 1.67 quality
points, while a " solid C" would be
worth 2.00 points. Fewer students would
graduate under such a system, it is presumed,
but the ones who did graduate would be
more likely to pass the bar examination.
Table4
Numerical Letter Points
100-95 A+ 4.00
94 - 90 A 4.00
89-85 A- 3.67
84-82 B+ 3.33
81 -78 B 3.00
77-75 B- 2.67
74-72 C+ 2.33
71-68 c 2.00
67 - 65 C - 1.67
64 D+ 1.33
63 ~65 D 1.00
60 D- 0.67
· 59 below F 0.00
b~-:->.:=~>-·~.&>. ·:~::)L,,~&\·=~-=
A concern mentioned by many of
the U of L graduates who took the
July 1978 Kentucky Bar Examination
when contacted by the Ad Hoc Com­mittee
to Study the July 1978 Bar
Examination Results was that the
Louisville PLS Bar Review course
began and ended a week later than
the Lexington PLS Bar Review course,
.so that those enrolled in the Louis­ville
course had less time for a final
review of their study materials than
those enrolled in the Lexington course.
When contacted by the Examiner,
Donald H. Smith, the president of
Professional Lecturing Services,
Inc., said that he did not think that
the difference between the starting
dates for the Lexington and Louis­ville
courses "had any effect what­ever
on the Bar results ." Mr. Smith
said that the Lexington course started
earlier last year because University of
Kentucky graduates had an earlier
graduation date than at U of L, and
the UK graduates requested an earlier
starting date for the bar review course.
In the past, Mr. Smith said, the
U of L graduates had expressed a pre­ference
for a later starting date (the
review course for the July Bar Exam­ination
usually begins the first Mon­day
in June). If the U of L grad­uates
this year would prefer an earlier
starting date, however, Mr. Smith
said "I'll do whatever they want, as
long as it's not to their detriment."
He said that PLS would be willing to
have the courses at all three locations
(PLS sponsors a review course in
Covington as well as in Lexington
and Louisville) start the third Monday
in May if the graduates expressed a
preference for that starting date.
Mr. Smith also indicated that classes
could be held five days a week in­stead
of on weekends and weekdays,
and that classes could be scheduled
for the afternoon instead of the even­ing
if a majority of those enrolled in
the course asked for such a schedule.
It had been his experience, Mr.
Smith said, that graduates preferred
having a longer period of time be­tween
graduation and the start of
the bar review to give them "a break
from the regimen of study." If the
graduates had more than three weeks
from the time the course ended until
taking the examination, he said, they
did not tend to apply themselves as
much during the course sessions.
"Just going to class isn't going to get
it," Mr. Smith warned, and graduates
should not take the course lightly and
expect to catch up during the time
between the end of the review course
and the bar examination.
Mr. Smith suggested that if U of L
graduates who plan to take the July
Bar Examination would like to have
the PLS review course start earlier
than it did last year, they should
circulate a petition to determine the
demand for an earlier starting date .
If about 70 percent of the graduates
agree on a particular starting date,
Mr. Smith said, he will try to arrange
the bar review schedule accordingly.
May graduates interested in sign­ing
such a petition should contact
SBA President Steve Arnell.
Law School
G.P.A. More than 40 40
2.0-2.20 500/o (2 of 4) 00/o (0 of[)
2.21-2.50 500Jo (I of 2) 600Jo (3 of 5)
2.51-2.80 IOOOfo (2 of 2) lOOOJo (2 of 2)
2.81-3.00 IOOO!o (I of I) 500Jo (I of 2)
Above 3.00 IOOOJo (3 3)
Total 6711fo (6 of9} 690Jo (9 of 13)
that working during law school does not
harm a student's chances later to pass the
bar examination."
A matrix was drawn which shows the
pass rate for each category after combining
the number of hours worked each week
with the graduate's law school grade point
average (see table 6). An ABA standard
which has been interpreted as restricting
full-time students from working more than
15 hours a week in outside employment was
not regularly enforced until this year by the
School of Law, so that over half the full­time
division graduates were found to have
worked more than 15 hours per week; the
pass rate for this group was found to be
greater than for those who worked 15
hours or less each week, and both of these
groups did better than the· students who did
not work at all (see table 8). (Because of the
difficulty encountered by many law schools
in enforcing the "IS-hour rule," it is being
reviewed by the Standards Review Com­mittee
of the Section on Legal Education
and Admissions to the Bar this year ac­cording
to a column by Law Student Divi-ion
president Bureon Ledbetter in the
December 1978 issue of Student Lawyer
magazine.)
Tal*7
f:.-tllkWBIIrlll law
hll-llme or,........._ diYilio•.
by pass rate
FuU-time Part-time
division division
\\ ork:ed 78f1e (51 of 64) 6287o (18 of29)
Did not
work
Future surveys of this type might try to
determine why so many students in the full­time
division choose to work, the report
suggested. If they work to gain practical ex­perience,
as from a clerking job, the com­mittee
suggested that the law school may
want to establish a pecial internship pro­gram
similar to that currently being im­plemented
in the Southern District of New
York (this program was reported on in the
October 24, 1978 issue of the Examiner in
the article, "Federal Judge Suggests Intern­ship").
If the students worked because they
needed extra money, the report suggested
that more scholarship money or additional
information about obtaining student loans
should be made available. (Although U of L
promised the ABA that it would make avail­able
a total of $108,300 for financial aid to
law students in the academic years 1976-77
and 1977-78, U of L fell more than $20,000
short of meeting that promise over the two­year
period. See the article in the September
12, 1978 issue of the Examiner, ''Questions
Remain Concerning Accreditation").
TableS
Full-time division graduates,
by fact and extent of work, by pass rate
Worked more than
15 hours
Worked 15 hours
or Jess
Did not work
Pass rate
830Jo (38of 46)
Louisville Law Examiner, January 30, 1979 7
21-39 16-20 IJ-15
670/o (2 of 3) 00/o (Oof I)
6011Jo (3 of 5) OOJo (0 of I)
88111o (7 of'S) IOOIIJo (3 of 3)
67l\lo (2 of3) IOOGi'o (2 of 2)
100% (3 of
81117o (22 of 27)
Another area examined by the committee
was that of the curriculum followed by the
graduates during their years in law school.
It was found that the pass rate of the
graduates who had taken all or most of the
"bar courses" (courses on subjects covered
by the Kentucky Bar Examination) tended
to be higher than for those graduates who
had not taken as many bar courses (see
table 9). The tables also showed, however,
that most graduates take most of the bar
courses, and that no one course appears to
be critical to a student's ability to pass the
bar examination (see table 10). The commit­tee
recommended that because of these find­ings,
the faculty should not adopt a re­quirement
that would limit a student's
freedom to choose courses. (At the present
time, a student at U of L is not required to
take any particular courses after the first
year. The Curriculum Committee has
recently come forward with a proposal to
require certain courses after the first year,
howe er.) The report concluded, "That
one's chances of bar exam success improve
with the number of bar courses taken is
enough of an incentive to take as many bar
courses as possible.''
Table9
Number of bar courses not taken,
BarCo.nes
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
by pass rate
oiTakea Pass Rate
830Jo (5 of 6)
800fo (20 of 25)
7611Jo (31 of 42)
6811Jo (13 of 19)
5011Jo (7 of 14)
71 OJo (5 of 7)
OOJo (0 of 1)
1000/o (1 of 1)
OO'Jo (0 of 1)
A final area studied by the committee
was that of how the U of L graduates
prepared for the July 1978 examination
during the t\ o month immediately
preceding the examination . Mo t of the
graduates, 96 percent, took some form of
bar review course, the most popular one
being the one sponsored by Professional
Lecturing Services, Inc. (PLS), an affiliate
of Bar Review Institute, Inc. Don Smith,
the president of PLS, told the committee
that 78 percent of U of L graduates who
took his course passed the bar examina­tion.
Of the four graduates who did not take
any kind of bar review course, three of
them passed the examination. All four had
an LSA T of over 600, and the three who
passed had a law school GP A of over 2.64.
The graduate who did not take a review
course and failed the examination had a
law school GPA of 2.3 .
Two tables were used in the report to
determine the effect of regular attendance
at the review sessions and pre-session
review of the lecture materials on the pass
rate of U of L graduates who took the PLS
course. As one might expect, the pass rate
for those who attended all of the sessions
was higher than for those who frequently
missed them, although few people missed
the sessions. The frequency with which the
graduate reviewed the material prior to the
lectures, however, did not appear to have
any significant effect on the graduate's per­formance
on the examination. In fact, the
more classes ...
. "*···· ' : ... • [~...].:~~:;;~:~~"\:'>
graduates who said they never reviewed the
materials before the lecture had the highest
pass rate (see tables 11 and 12).
Fewer graduates worked during the two
months before the bar examination than
worked during law school, the committee
found, but once again, the employment did
not appear to hurt the graduate's chances
for success on the examination. Only 58
percent, or 60, of the graduates worked
during the two months prior to the exam,
while 42 percent, or 43, graduates did not.
The pass rate for the first group was 75 per­cent;
the pass rate for those who did not
work was 70 percent.
Would the person who picked up my
books from the library table please
return them?
-Two Weeks Behind
The Key Number System
takes you from one
case in any law book
to all cases in point
Take a cited opinion . Check the Table of Cases in your
Key Number Digest. There you'll find the Key Number
that classifies that case and all others in point. And this
method works even when you begin with cases from
books not based on the Key Number System. That's
one way the compatible Key Number System makes
your library more valuable, more useful. Find out how
you can put it to work too, today.
0. K. CURRY, JR.
B. S. Universjty of Kentucky
J. D. University of Kentucky
WEST PUBLISHING COMPANY
Sales Representative
Phone: 502/584/5058
8 Louisville Law Examiner, Januar}30, 1979
Third-ytar student John MrCarty desrribes what hap~ned the ni~eht he saved a neil(hbnr frnm a
fire in the house next door to his home. He injured his hand when he broke a window In help the
man.
Counseling Team to be Organized
by Sam Carl
"Legal Malpractice: Yes, No or Maybe"
is the subject of this year's Client Counsel­ing
Competition. Sponsored by the American
Bar Association's Law Student Division,
the competition involves most AHA­approved
law schools and boasts the par­ticipation
of teams from 120 such schools
in 1978.
As faculty advisor, Professor Marlin
Volz will organize a team from U of L for ·
the regional competition to be held on
March 10, at the John Marshall Law School
in Cleveland. Teams placing first in the
regionals advance to the National Compe­tition
scheduled on March 31 and April I
at the University of San Diego School of
Law, San Diego, California.
The competition has a unique format
wherein team members face a potential
client in a law office consultation situation .
Acting as attorneys, the students must con­duct
an interview with a person posing as
the client and then advise him concerning
the hypothetical question. The problem it­self
is provided by the Law Student Divi­sion
in the form of a short memorandum
similar to what a law office secretary
might be given when a client calls to
make an appointment.
Teams consist of two law students and
an alternate, with one team representing
each school. U of L's team in last year's
competition won the first of two rounds
in the regionals to take second place
honors. Representing U of L were Alan
Schmitt, Carl Arnold, anp Ted Pappas,
all of whom have graduated.
Instructor James Ragan encourages
interested law students from U of L to
contact him or Prof. Volz, as team open­ings
still exist. Winning teams in the regional
competition will receive a certificate mounted
on a walnut plaque for their school, as well
as individual certificates for the team mem­bers.
At the national competition, the first,
second and third place teams receive school
plaques and individual certificates.
Student Injures Hand While
Saving Neighbor From Fire
"It's a good feeling to know you can
help somebody out," says John McCarty.
He should know. On the morning of
December 18th Mr. McCarty, a third-year
day division student at the School of Law,
rescued a man who was trapped in a burn­ing
building on South Fourth Street in
Louisville.
Mr. McCarty and his wife, Carolyn,
were awakened at I :30 a .m. by the sound of
breaking glass and cries for help. When
they got up to investigate, they discovered
that the building next to their apartment
building was on fire, and a man was trapped
on a third-story window ledge of the burn­ing
structure.
Acting quickly, Mr. McCarty broke out a
window which faced the adjacent building,
severely cutting his hand in the process.
By this time, the man on the ledge was
threatening to jump.
Carolyn McCarty tried to calm the man
down while Mr. McCarty searched for
something with which to bridge the distance
between the two buildings. He found a step
ladder, placed it across the gap between
the buildings, and helped the man climb to
safety.
The entire episode was over in only two
or three minutes, Mr. McCarty said.
Of the injuries to people caused by the
December fire, Mr. McCarty "got the worst
of it," he said. He still wears a covering
over the injured hand .
Since the fire, the McCartys have pur­chased
two fire alarms and a fire ladder for
their apartment. Mr. McCarty said that
they are more concerned about the possi­bility
of fire now as a result of their ex­perience,
and found it hard to sleep soundly
again until just recently.
In recognition of his rescue effort during
the fire, Mr. McCarty is to be awarded the
Mayor's Citation.
Scholarship Fund Established
(Continued frnm page I)
Soliciting for pledges to the Fund started
in December, 1978, and according to Mr.
Golliher, will continue until they have gone
through the senior class. However, dona­tions
are not limited to this year's senior
class. "We invite the alumni to contribute
to the fund either by contributing to the
fund or signing the agreement," said Mr.
Golliher.
Mr. Russell noted that the Fund recently
recei ed a sizeable contribution from an
unknown benefacwr. As to the soliciting of
this year's senior class, Mr. Russell said,
"It's not been hard sell. They contribute if
they want. If they don't, that's fine. The
response has been real good and we are go­ing
to have some more. Even those who
don't sign now will probably donate even­tually."
According to agreements already signed
by 24 law students, each party pledges
$1,000 to be paid in installments into the
Fund during the period between May I,
1979 and May I, 1985. Subscribers to the
agreement can pay their $1 ,000 into the
Fund in any manner they choose. For ex­ample,
there could be a donation of zero
the first year and $200 a year for the next
five years, or they could be single $1 ,000
donations in any of the six years.
The decision to name the Fund the
Marlin M. Volz Scholarship Fund was
made "because of his years of service to the
law school and because of his popularity
with the students and in the community,"
said Mr. Russell.
The reaction to the Fund has been good,
as evidenced by the pledges already made.
"In the past, the alumni haven't done their
best. You can't have a successful school
unless the alumni support it. I'd like to see
this thing snowball and get everyone in­volved,"
said Mr. Russell.
Mr. Golliher noted that he "couldn't be
more pleased; it's already a success. I've
always been proud of my classmates, but
nothing that they have done individually or
collectively has impressed me more than
this."
Moving?
Please send us your new address
four weeks in advance.
WOODY'S TAVERN
&ALE GARDEN
brook & burnett
Please pick up one of our Special
Calendars at the Law School Library ...
Thursdays (Pitchers $1.50) All Day
Strict Dress Code (No Disco Apparel)
~OODY
Louisville Law Examiner. January 30, 1979 9
_Greenebaum Award Recognizes
Expertise in Legal Writing
The Samuel L. Greenebaum Award and
Fund was established by agreement be­tween
Mrs. Rita L. Greenebaum, Mr.
Greenebaum ' widow, and the University
of Loui ville Foundation, dated January
II , 1977. The award is given annually at
the Award Day ceremony at the School of
Law to that law student in the day or night
di i ion who "demonstrates the highest
degree of excellence and achievemer.t in
legal writing."
An wriuen legal work, whether brief,
article or memorandum, prepared during
the preceding academic year is eligible for
consideration for the award. The Dean of
the Law School or his designee, determines
the recipient of the award on an annual
basi .
The award consists of a plaque engra ed
with the name of the winner each year and a
ca h award in the amount of $100. The
amount of the cash award may be increased
from time to time at thee ·pres request of
Mrs. Greenebaurn. Additional income earned
by the fund is made available to the Dean
of the La School as a discre.tionary fund
to help defray unusual costs and expenses
which were not planned for in the annual
budget.
Mr. Greenebaurn was educated at the
University of Michigan where he received
an AB degree cum laude in 1924 and was
later graduated from the Harvard Law
School in 1927. He was admitted to
Variety of Courses
o t omey
ALI-ABA The American Law
Institute-American Bar Association Com­mlltee
on Cont inuing Profes ional Educa-
11 n ( Ll- B ) pon ring our e
covenng a 11riet) of ubjec in ommg
months.
The ninth annual cour e of tud} on en­vironmental
law will be presented February
22-24 in Wa hington, D.C. The program
will be pon ored by ALI-ABA in conjunc­tion
with the Environmental Law Institute
and the mith onian Institution.
Recent developments under the ational
Environmental Policy ct and under
federal and tate air and "ater pollution
control laws, and the ne" to i ub tance
control legislation will be revie,~ed.
Another annual course for lawyers, this
one about estate planning, will be held
March 15-16 in St. Louis, and May 3-4 in
Boston. The Bo ton presentation will be
co-sponsored by the Massachusens Continu­ing
Legal Education- ew England Law Insti­tute,
Inc.
practice in the federal courts of Kentucky
and the District of Columbia and was a
member of the bar of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the U.S.
Supreme Court. From 1930 to 1933 he served
as assistant county attorney for Jefferson
County. He was president of the Com­munity
Chest of Louisville and Jefferson
County from 1948-49. He served as chair­man
and a member of the Louisville Civil
Service Board in the 1960s. He was active
both in the Louisville and Kentucky Bar
Association as well as the Association of
the Bar of the City of New York.
Throughout his career, Mr. Greenebaum
set the highest possible standards for legal
writing done by his partners and associates.
He felt that the written word was the
primary tool of the lawyer, both in ad­vocacy
and persuasion as well as in com­munication
with clients and fellow at­torneys.
Therefore, his partners and
friends wanted to establish this award to
reflect his sincere and abiding interest in
upgrading the quality and excellence of
legal writing at the University of Louisville
School of Law, a ording to Ronald D.
Ray, member the law firm of Greenebaum,
Doll and McDonald.
Family Law Essay Contest
The Howard C. Schwab Memorial
Award Essay Contest is conducted annually
by the Family Law Section of the American
Bar Association in cooperation with the
Toledo Bar Association and the Ohio Bar
Association as a memorial to their deceased
leader. The prizes are awarded from a
memorial fund created by The Toledo Bar
Association and administered by the Ohio
State Bar Foundation.
The purpose of the contest is to create a
greater interest in the field of Family Law
among all law students of the nation, and
particularly the Law Student Division of
the American Bar Association.
All second and third year students enrolled
in AHA-approved law schools, and first
year students enrolled in said schools where
the subject of family law is part of the first
year curriculum, are eligible to compete,
except employees of the American Bar
Association, Ohio Bar Association, or
Toledo Bar Association.
The winners of first, second, and third
places as selected and announced by the
judges, will be presented with cash awards
in the amounts of $500, $300, and $200,
re pectively.
Ea-ch entry must be the work of a single
individual.
The subject may be any aspect of Family
Law which the contestant chooses. Sug­gested
length is about 3,000 words, though
the length may be more or less, as the sub­ject
merits. Essays scheduled to be published
or which have previously been published
are ineligible for consideration.
Entries will be judged on the basis of
timeliness of subject, practicality,
originality, quality of research, and clarity
of style.
Law students desiring to enter the con­test
should write to Howard C. Schwab
Memorial Award Essay Contest, Section of
Family Law, American Bar Assocation,
1155 East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois
60637, requesting an entry form, which
must be completed and returned with the
essay.
Entries for the 1979 awards must be sub­mitted
to the Howard C. Schwab Memorial
Award Essay Contest, at the above ad­dress,
postmarked on or before April 16,
1979.
J>lwto by J>at Chism
Although recent legislation has caused
estate planning to become an increa ingly
complex and specialized area of practice,
this course of swdy is designed for the
practitioners with some experience in the
planning of modest-sized estates, rather
than for the estate planning specialist. The
faculty will address itself to a discussion of
what difference the new laws make and
how the approach to estate planning will
shift to maximize taxpayer benefits.
"The brain is like the hand. It ~rows with usin~."- Louis Brandeis
Program topics are: how the tax law
changes affect lifetime giving; planning for
interspousal transfers; status of regulations
under the 1976 and 1978 acts; planning for
generation-skipping transfers in trust; post­mortem
planning; planning including
special use valuation; and effect of tax laws
on payment of qualified plan benefits and
other deferred compensation and life in­surance.
Congress has enacted a new Federal
Bankruptcy Code and the new code will be
the subject of another course of study for
lawyers.
Because of the far-reaching significance
of this new law, the first complete revision
of the bankruptcy laws of the United States
in 40 years, ALI-ABA will offer this course
in five cities during the next 16 months.
These courses will be presented on March
29-31, 1979, in Dallas; June 14-16, 1979, in
San Francisco; October 4-6, 1979, in
Chicago; and January 24-26, 1980, in New
Orleans.
The program will be taught by practicing
lawyers. The faculty will include two
former Congressional staff attorneys who
were among the principal draftsmen of the
new law. Designed to emphasize the prac­tical,
the course will facilitate a thorough
understanding of how the law will affect
practitioners and their clients. It will em­phasize
in-court and out-of-court techni­ques
and tactics which will constitute the
art of practicing under the new law. Corpo­rate
and commercial lawyers will benefit
from an in-depth discussion of the effect of
the code on lending and leasing to solvent
and insolvent businesses.
A new course for lawyers on professional
malpractice will be offered March 16-17 in
Denver.
This program will examine four inter­related
areas of professional liability:
medical malpractice, legal malpractice, ar­chitects'
and engineers' malpractice, and
accountants' malpractice. Actual case
histories as well as anticipated future prob-
!ems facing the professional will be con­sidered.
The program will begin with an overview
of many areas of professional liability, in­cluding
that of lawyers, doctors, hospitals,
accountants, teachers, architects, engineers,
surveyors, insurance brokers, psychiatrists,
and morticians. Following the overview
will be discussions of professional liability
in four of the most litigated areas by promin­ent
writers, scholars, and litigators in
those areas.
For further information, or to register
for the courses, please contact the
Registrar, ALI-ABA, 4025 Chestnut
Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104; or
telephone (215) 387-3000.
10
Moot Court
Makes Changes
(Continued from page I)
to assist generally in the development of a
portion of the law school curriculum.
The first tangible product of the commit­tee's
efforts was a moot court handbook
which was distributed to first-year students
at no charge. It includes instructions for
the required memorandum and brief as well
as the preparation of the oral presentation.
However, Mr. Seiffert stresses that the
real key to the program changes is in the
concentrated use of upperclassmen as stu­dent
mentors. "Each mentor plays a very
important role and they must be available
to the mentees ... they will be required to
be available a certain amount of time."
Twenty-six mentors were selected prior
to the semester break. They received
specific instructions on how much informa­tion
to distribute and how much they can
help the mentees with their research and
preparation. Each mentor .supervises four
or five mentees.
The mentor program is supervised by
third-year student Jerry Mirabito and
second-year student Lisa Hughes.
Heightening the emphasis on the men­tors'
contribution is seen by the committee
as a method to insure some uniform quality
in the program. Students will be dealing
only with their mentors in discussing their
problems.
The committee has reinstituted the en­forcement
of the Honor Code during the
Moot Court program; a first year student
who receives aid from anyone other than
his mentor in preparing his ritten y,ork
will be in violation of the Honor Code.
Mr. eiffe rt tres ed that the re-implementation
of the Honor Code
re tri tton a n 1 due to an} Im­proprieties
in pa t year . " It ' not puni h­ment
. It simply enables those who do the
v ork to get the credit for it. I o, it add
redibiht} to our program."
This year's problem concern only area
which are covered during the fi r t year of
law school, specifically torts, contracts,
and civil procedure. ''The coverage of legal
subjects outside the first-year curriculum
was a major source of complaints in prior
years," Mr. Seiffert said.
!though this year's hypothetical cases
were obtained from ew York University's
Law School, Mr. Seiffert said that the
Moot Court Board is current ly working
towa rd a program under which it would
develop all of the problems for its pro­gram.
Louisville Law Examiner, January 30, 1979
Second-year student Bruce Reynolds l'nnfers with his )(rllUp uf mentees un their muut l'nurt problem.
Fir t-year tudem received their pro­blem
during the emester brea k o that
they could begin their research then if they
desired to do so. The program began for­mally
on return from break , when the pa r­ticipant
received their handbook . OY.
they are preparing a legal memorandum
discussing all aspects of the issues in olved .
The memorandum will be ungraded.
Next the participants will each prepare a
brief supporting an argument of one of the
parties. This will be graded by Instructor
James Ragan. First round oral arguments
will be held March 10-11 .
The members of the freshman moot
court committee a re: Chris J ohnson, Jim
Thoma , J erry Mira bito, Li a Lindeman,
Judy Kidwell, Tom Wine, Bruce Reynold ,
Doug Dowell, Don Becher, Lisa Hughes,
David Barber, and Jim Seiffert.
Few Students Join LSD
Membership in the Law Student Division
of the American Bar A ociat ion at the
niver ity of Loui ville i one of the lowest
in the ixth cir uit, ac ording to Pam
Lambert, ci rcuit governor.
As of the end of November, the law
school's membership was only 25 .8 percent
of the student body. Only one new member
was enrolled during that month. A 30 per­cent
membership level is required to be
eligi ble for project gra nts from the Law
Student Services Fund .
Member hip in the division ent it les a stu­dent
to participate in activi tie of the eni or
bar, a well a to attend conference of the
La'' tudent Divi ion. There a re over 30
na tional liaison po iti ons which have
recently been declared open. A liaison par­ticipates
in the acti vities of a secti on of the
meri a n Bar A ocia tion in formulating
propo als, drafting legislation and in­vestigating
problem areas of the law.
Division membership also entitles
students to participate in a number of
wntmg contests. Reduced rates are
available for subscriptions to the ABA
Journal and for insurance. The division
sponsors nat ional contests for law
students, including the National Appellate
Advocacy and Client Counseling competi­ti
ons.
Membership in the Law Student Divi sion
costs five dollars per year. Members receive
the monthly magazine, Student Lawyer.
ABA/Law Student Division Application (Please Print) Reduced Section Rates
Name ________________________________________ ~~-----------------------
Last Forst M1ddlf'
Street _____________________________ Ctty _____________ state ______ ztp __ _
Ma1ilng Address
Law School ___________________ ctty __________ _
Prospect1ve
B11th Date Law School Entry Graduat1on Date
DO DODD DDDDDDDD Month Day Year Month Year Month Year
As a Law Student member of the ABA, I will. abide by its Constitution and By-laws.
S9narure-------------------------------------------------------------------------
0 Enclosed is $5.00 for membership. 0 I am already a Law Student Division
member. 0 Enclosed is $3.00 more for 12 months of the ABA Journal.
Send check and application to:
American Bar Association
Membership Department
1155 East 60th Street
Chicago. Illinois 60637
Office Use Only: DDDDDD Numeric
State Code
Alpha
State Code
Law School
Code
(AL) Administrative Law . ........... . .. _I_] $5
(AT) Anlitrust Law . . . . . . . . . . . ... n $3
(BA) Bar Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . [J $3
(CL) Corporation. Banking and Business Law .... . ..... . .. . .0 $3
(CR) Criminal Law .............. . . . ....... . .. .[] $5
(EP) Economics of Law Practice ....... . ... ... .... .. . .... 0 $3
(FL) Family Law . . ........ . ......... . ... . . ... . ........ .lJ $5
(GP) General Practice .. . . . . . . .. . .. . . ..... . . 0 $5
(lA) Individual Rights and Responsibilities . . . . .. . ... ... .0 $5
(IL) Insurance. Negligence and Compensation Law . . .. . .. . . 0 $5
(IC) International Law . . ... : ......... . .. .. .0 $5
(JA) Judicial Administration .................. . ..... . .. . . . . 0 $3
(LL) Labor Relations Law ... . . . . . . .. . .0 $5
(LE) Legal Educat1on and Admission to the Bar ..... . ... . .. . 0 $3
(L T) Litigatton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . ......... 0 $5
(LG) Local Government Law .... .. . . .................. . ... 0 $5
(NR) Natural Resources Law . . . . . .... . ... . .... . ..... .0 $5
(PT) Patent. Trademark and Copyright Law ............ .0 $3
(PC) Public Contract Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... . ... . .. .. .0 $3
(PL) Public Utility Law ...... . .... ... ... .. ... . . . .... . .. .. . .0 $3
(RP) Real Property. Probate and Trust Law . .. .... . ... . .. .. .0 $3
(ST) Science and Technology . . ... . .... .. . . . ... ... .... . .. .0 $3
(TX) Taxation . . . . . ... . . . . .... . . ... . .... ......... . .0 $6
(YL) Young Lawyers .. · . . .... . ... .. .... . ........ .. . . .. . . .0 $3
Louisville Law Examiner. January 30, 1979 11
Matheson Urges Support For
Law-Related Education
(Continued from paj!e 2)
declines in their knowledge of government and lost ground in their understanding
of the political process and their willingness to participate in it.
The results of the National Assessment were not totally bleak, however.
Students in 1975 did better than their counterparts six years earlier in recognizing
and supporting constitutional rights and understanding the role of law in a
democrati society.
It is difficult to interpret te ts and draw conclusions, but the National Assess­ment's
report does suggest that one reason teenagers did better on recognizing
con titutional rights may be the "marked increase in statewide citizenship and
Ia -related education project " that has taken place in this decade.
If this is true, why are these courses succeeding, and what can they offer that
traditional civics education cannot? That's a complex question, but I'd like to
suggest that law-related programs may be doing the job because they don't try to
preach to students or give them an idealized picture of our society; rather, they
deal realistically with important problems.
Let me give an example. Many have reported that traditional civic education is
too dull, that it focuses on the formal processes of government-how a bill
become a law, for example-and doesn't give students insight into the dynamics
of how our governmental and legal systems actually work.
Law-related education is different. In the best Law-related programs, the study
of law is a way of asking question • not a device for getting unrealistic answer .
Instead of ha ing students memorize the First Amendment, law-related education
shows them the Fir t Amendment in action by examining tough cases in which the
free speech guarantee is applied in real situations. Does a radical group have the
right to hold a rally in a hostile community, even if violence might break out? Do
they have a right to hold the rally in the middle of rush hour? Do they have the
right to use loudspeakers in a residential neighborhood? Do they have the right to
quietly pass out leaflets, or to silent! protest by sewing replicas of the American
flag onto their clothing?
These are not abstract questions but the kind of diffi ult concerns that are raised
whenever the Constitution is applied. Studying the Con titution through legal
cases i an e cellent way of making it orne ali e, and law-relate~ education can
help make tudents begin to analyze real issues as they affect r~al people of all age
group and ba kgrounds.
One of the great strengths of the law-related education movement is that so
man people from the community-lawyers, judges, law students and faculty,
police officers, probation officers-are willing to share their time with teachers
and students, willing to make the law more alive and real.
Community resource people can help in many ways. They can work with
teachers on curriculum development; the can help train teachers; they can come
into the etas room - ionall} to pea ith tudents, take pan in law-related
· i th Ia r ' ud e or d i or for mock trials.
nd the> can help out of the Ia room~ too. One of the real pluses of la'-"­related
education is the multiplicity of sites for students to visit. Courts, correc­tional
in titutions, police stations and lawyers' offices are but a few possibilities
for field e cursions-and at each one volunteer resource persons can answer
tu t 'qu tion and enri h the experience.
T · ar pi n . I numu f r y u to h lp. entu ky held an ambitiou
t\\<O-da} r • thi ummer for tea her , Ia" yer and edu at or from all o'er
the state. I w~ h n ed to t e part in that meeting. The mmunit) r urce people
and teachers there et up ontinuing r ionalla \-related group in ever area of
t!.e tate.
For information on what's happening in your area, I'd suggest you call or write
Essay Entrants Encouraged
AHA/Chicago-The 'Tlerican Bar
Association's Section of In uran e,
egligence and Compensation Law (I CL)
has announced sponsorship of the 1979
Medi ine and Law Student Writing Con­test.
The fir t pia e winner will receive a cash
award of $500 a well as an all-expense-
In Memoriam
Otis Preston Dobie
Otis Preston Dobie died last June
in Charlottesville, Virginia. Mr.
Dobie taught at the University of
Loui ville School of Law and the
Jeffer on School of Law for 20
year , and was the Bernard Flexner
Professor. He retired from U of L
in 1960.
Before coming to U of L, he prac­ticed
law in Richmond, Virginia,
then held law professorships at Mer­cer
University and Harvard Law
School.
Upon his retirement from U of L,
Professor A.B. Russell said of him,
"A scholar and a gentleman, he goes
about his work with a pleasant dig­nity
that commands respect. and at the
same time endears him 10 all with
whom he comes in contact."
paid trip to the ABA' annual meeting in
Dalla to present the "inning paper at a
meeting of the 1edicine and La" Commit-tee.
Second and third place winners will
receive awards of $250 and $100 respectively.
Also, all entries submitted will be con­sidered
for publication in The Forum, INCL's
quarterly journal.
Essayists are permitted to choose any
topic which concerns emerging legal issues
in the area of medicine and law. Entries
should be a minimum of 3,000 words in
length and must be original, unpublished
works.
The competition is open to all law stu­dent
members of the INCL Section currently
enrolled beyond their first year in AHA­approved
law schools. Non-member en­trants
may join the section when requesting
or submitting the official registration
form.
All entrants must pre-register their intent
to submit a paper by March I, 1979. Com­pleted
papers must be postmarked on or
before May I, 1979. The results of the com­petition
will be announced on July I, 1279.
Official contest regulations, registration
forms and membership applications may
be obtained from Nancy Parker (312/
947-3868) at ABA Section of Insurance,
Negligence and Compensation Law,
Medicine and Law Writing Contest, 1155
East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637.
The Kentucky Department of Education sponsored a traininR seminar for teachen .. on law-related
education in November 1978.
Helen Worthington, Social Studies Consultant, Division of Program Develop­ment,
Department of Education, Frankfort, Kentucky, 40601 (502-564-2106).
And, of course, the ABA would be delighted to inform you of the activities in
other states, available curriculum materials and ideas for curricular programs. It
publishes guidelines for projects, a handbook on funding and catalogues of cur­riculum
materials. Its magazine, Update on Law-Related Education, reports on
recent Supreme Court cases, provides classroom strategies and contains features
on new developments in the law. For information on how the ABA can help you,
write or call Norman Gross, Staff Director, YEFC, American Bar Association,
1155 East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60637 (312-947-3961).
Editors' note-The Examiner has agreed to pass the word along to students at
the School of Law when the Kentucky Department of Education is looking for
law students to help with teacher training seminars or activities in the state
schools which involve law-related education. Two third-year students from the
School of Law assisted in the presentation of mock trials at a teacher training
seminar in Louisville last fall after being "recruited" in this manner. Any student
who would like to participate in such an activity this spring, should the op­portunity
arise again, is encouraged to stop by the Examiner office or contact one
of the editors to let us know of your interest.
Get well Angelo! Love, Jerry
MICHIE,_.Q
BOBBS-MERRILL
Bobbs-Merrill publishes the Official Edition of the Ken­tucky
Revised Statutes which is professionally pre­sented
in 20 permanently bound volumes reflecting
the highest standards and tradition of law book
publishing.
Its extensive and easy to use annotations, which are
read by the judges, were written by experienced
lawyer-editors who carefully checked every statute to
insure that all cases which have cited, applied or con­strued
that statute are annotated under the text of the
statute.
Any student who will practice law in the state of Ken­tucky
may have the entire set for no more than ten
dollars per month with no interest or carrying charge.
Similar terms are available for all attorneys.
Jim Schultz
Sales Representative
821 Skylark Drive
Louisville, Kentucky 40223
(502) 583·8874 or 425·0834
12 Louisville Law Examiner
HALT Wants Legal Reform
(Continued from page 3)
Hill townhouse and it has only two paid
employees. So far, the organization has
about 300 dues-paying members at about
$15 a clip.
In that article, Mr. Valencic notes that
funds will be solicited next from a prepared
list of doctors; then they will contact real
e tate people. "Those are two areas where
there' a strong feeling against lawyers,"
he said.
Both Mr. Valencic and Paul Hasse, the
o rganization's founder, are Rhodes
scholars in their 20's. The group's acting
general counsel is Dan Lewolt, 28, a
graduate of San Diego's California
\ estern School of Law. However, not all
of the organization's promoters are un­knowns.
It is difficult to find a textbook
on wills and trusts that does not include at
least one case which was spawned by How
to A void Probate. The book's author, or­man
Dacey, is on the Board of Advisors of
HALT.
HALT was founded by Mr. Hasse less
than a year ago, but it has been more suc­ces
ful in getting publicity than many more
monied and influential organizations. A re­quest
for information will bring you not
only their literature, but copies of their
press clippings as well.
Perhaps because it is always in vogue to
malign lawyers, but probably because
editors feel the public will enjoy reading
about lawyers being maligned, the organi­zation's
efforts have gotten coverage in
U.S. News & World Report, the
Washington Star, the San Francisco
Chronicle and a variety of other nationally
known mediums, including network televi­sion.
ow, it may be that the only thing this
organization is good at is press agentry,
selling itself to the media (this one included)
as something of a David-in-search-of-a­Goliath
or rather an army of Goliaths. It
does make good copy .
On the other hand, while its criticism of
the legal profession is simplistic and
borders on jingoism, it is not baseless. At
present the organization's literature is not
trying to educate the public. It is eliciting
support by reinforcing the beliefs and pre­judices
the public already holds.
Yes, lawyers are bad and deceitful and
all most of them want is your money. But,
if we get together we can show them who's
boss!
The organization is not trying to create
public opinion against the legal profes­sion-
it is trying to harness the power of an
animosity that already exists. That's much
easier than actually creating publi·c feeling.
How, or rather if, the legal profession
will react to this organization depends
upon whether the profession would rather
treat the symptom or the disease. An
organization like this one evolves because
some segments of society feel that they are
being treated unfairly. It continues because
that public perception, whether it is ac­curate
or not, remains unchanged.
The public actually believes that lawyers
make too much money. That they have too
much power. That they make things too
complicated.
So far it has been beyond the ability or
the interests of the organized bar to change
those perceptions either by changing the
facts upon which they are based or by
adequately explaining to the public that
tho e fact imply do not e ist.
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
Feb. 6 University of Louisville School of Law: Law Forum Sponsors
Harvey Sloane; Noon, Allen Courtroom.
Feb. 16-17 Continuing Legal Education, College of Law, University of
Kentucky: Trial Techniques & Evidence.
March 8 University of Louisville School of Law: last day to drop a course.
March 9 Continuing Legal Education, College of Law, University of
Kentucky: Workshop for Legal Secretaries.
March 9-11 American Bar Association-Law Student Division: Sixth Circuit
Spring Conference; Cleveland, Ohio.
March 17-25 Spring Break
April I 0 Deadline for filing application for Kentucky Bar Exam.
Louisville Law Examiner
School of Law
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky 40208
John M. Harlan Louis D. Brandeis
Louisville
Law Examiner
Vol. 4, No. S
January 30, 1979
Marlin M. Volz
Scholarship
Established
... page 1
Performance
of U of L
Grads on
Bar Exam
Studied
... page 6
The moot
court program
is under way.
The cartoon at
right depicts
the new image
of the Honor
Council as
perceived by
our artist,
a first-year
student.

Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.

Louisville Law Examiner
Volume 4 Number 5
Moot Court
Board Makes
New Plans
s a requirement for graduation, all U
of L law tudents must complete the first­year
moot court program. Just what "the
program" is, its value to the participants
and the quality of it administration varies
from year to year, primarily because the ef­fort
i tudent-operated and in recent years
each uccessive Moot Court Board has
changed the format.
This year's Board is placing special em­phasi
on the first-year program, both in
terms of the energies and the manpower it
is devoting to the project.
Second-year student and Moot Court
Board member Jim Seiffert is the chairman
of the frrst-year moot court program.
Along with eight members of the student
body at large and three other Board
members, he controls the program. Struc­turally,
the committee was authorized by
the Moot Court Board and, according to
Mr. Seiffert, it stays in close touch with
Board president Jeff Stiles.
Mr. Seiffert is wholly enthusiastic about
the attitudes and the efforts of the commit­tee
members. He said that most of the par­ticipants
are involved primarily because
they hope to raise the quality of the pro­gram
above that of their first-year ex­periences,
and also because they would like
(Continued on page 10)
SPrving The University of Louisville School of Law Community
Louisville, Kentucky, January 30, 1979 Circulation 3800
Pr f r Marli• M. olz pnparn to mail h" lat~l man11 ript fnr W~t's F~d~ral l'rac:riu Manual. A scholarship fund ~l a blis lted by members of
the senior class ha bren named after "The Ju d ~te" In hnnnr his ~·ea rs of service to the law sehoul.
Cost of New Wing
Flies Out of Sight
Law Students Establish
Marlin M. Volz Scholarship
by Valerie Sal en
The Examiner reported last
semester (in the article, "Questions
Remain Concerning Accreditation,''
Sept. 12, 1978 issue of the Examiner)
that the Accreditation Committee of
the American Bar Association
(ABA) Section of Legal Education
and Admissions to the Bar had
directed the School of Law to com­plete
plans by July 7, 1979, for an ex­pansion
of the present facilities. This
requirement was made in order to in­sure
that the School of Law would
continue to progress toward com­pliance
with the ABA's minimum
space requirement for law schools.
Plans for a new wing for the
School of Law appeared to be pro­gressing
well until sometime in
December, when the architects
employed by the University of
Louisville to design the building
plans made some final adjustments
in their estimate of cost-per-square­foot
for the new construction and
found that the new figure significantly
exceeded their earlier estimates.
According to Student Bar Associa­tion
President Stephen M. Arnett,
who is a member of the School of
Law Building Advisory. Committee,
it was discovered that costs would
run about $83 per square foot, in­stead
of $55 per square foot as
originally planned. This increased
the total projected cost of the new
wing from the 5.9 million approved
by University of Louisville President
James G. Miller to a cost of about 7
million, and the building plans were
consequently "put into abeyance,"
according to Mr. Arnett.
The School of Law is once again
working on building plans. But, Mr.
Arnett explained, the forced aban­donment
of the original plans put the
school "back at square one," and
the process of hammering out a
building concept which is
economically feasible as well as ade­quate
to accommodate the various
future needs of the School of Law
must be started again.
It is not known at this time what
building design will finally be
adopted, but President Miller has
stipulated that the new wing must be
symmetrical with the old wing of the
School of Law (the library wing)
when viewed from the oval, Mr.
Arnett said.
The Examiner will publish a com­plete
report on the building plans for
the new wing of the School of Law
after the plans receive final approval.
by Greg Yopp
Twenty-four students from the University
of Louisville School of Law have pledged
$1,000 each to the University of Louisville
Foundation, Inc. for the recently establish­ed
Marlin M. Volz Scholarship Fund.
The Marlin M. Volz Scholarship Fund is
the result of conversations between Ken­neth
W. Golliher, J. Scott Preston, and
Robert Russell. (Mr. Preston is a December
1978 graduate of the Law School and both
Mr. Golliher and Mr. Russell are third-year
students.) But why do three law students
establish a scholarship fund and solicit
substantial pledges from their classmates?
"U of L has had ii's hard knocks ... and
a lot of people do nothing but complain,
'they don't do this and they don't do
that.' I'll be an alumnus next year and I
want to do something to help the school.
This is something I can do right now,"
explained Mr. Russell.
By the middle of the fall semester of
1978, what was once just an idea began to
take shape. With the assistance of
Associate Dean Norvie L. Lay and Steve
Bing, Vice President University Relations
Office, the specific details of the Fund were
worked out, and the University's Legal Af­fairs
Department drew up the trust agree­ment.
The decision to go ahead with the
Fund was made, according to Mr. Golliher,
because of the need and the thought that
their classmates would support the idea.
The new scholarship fund won't come a
minute too soon. About three years ago, U
of L's law school was subject to a routine
inspection by an American Bar Association
(ABA) accreditation team. According to a
synopsis of the report submitted to the Ac­creditation
Committee of the ABA's Sec­tion
of Legal Education and Admissions to
the Bar, the law school was guilty of viola­tions
of ABA standards. They felt the
School of Law lacked adequate resources
for law student financial aid.
ABA officials have noted that an accept­able
level of funding would offer financial
assistance to 10-20 percent of the law
school student body. This year's total
amount available for law student financial
aid, when fully dispersed, will assist less
than 10 percent of the current student body
of the law school.
After May I, 1985, the annual income of
the Fund will be dispersed in the form of
full in-state tuition scholarships awarded to
full-time junior and senior law students at
the University of Louisville. Recipients of
the scholarships will be selected solely on
the basis of academic achievement and will
be chosen from the junior and senior
classes in equal numbers by the Scholarship
Committee of the Law School.
(Continued on page 8)
2 Louis,·ille taw Examiner, January 30, 1979
Louisville Law Examiner
EDITORIAL BOARD
Susan Turner Barnett, Co-Editor-in Chief
Valerie Salven, Co-Editor-in-Chief
Shaun Esposito. Associate Editor
Schuyler Olt, Associate Editor
Elizabeth Ward, Business Mana~er
STAFF
Greg Yopp, City Editor
Bruce Dudley, Brandeis Brief Editor
Jerry Adair, News Editor
Sam Carl, Projects Editor
Rick Masters, Articles Editor
Jerome A. Mirabito, Executive Editor
Judge MARLIN M. VOLZ, Advisor
Pat Chism, Ph11to~rapher
Gerald F. "Bear" Schray. Artist
John Greenup, Asst. Business Mana~er
frank Burnette
Kenneth W. Golliher
Professor ALBERT T. QUICK, Consultant
The Louisville Law Examiner is published ei~hl times durin~ the academic year in the
interest of the University of Louisville School of Law community. Unsi~ned editorial opinions
are those representing a majority vote of the editorial board and do not necessarily express the
views of the School of Law or the University of Louisville.
Articles are invited from faculty members, students, and members of the bar who wish to do
freelance work, but any proposed article must be cleared in advance with the editor as to topic
and length. This is to avoid duplication of coverage and insure that the article will not be
beyond workable length for a newspaper format.
Addres all communications lo the Louisville Law Examiner. School of Law, University of
Loui ville, Louisville, Kentucky 40208. Phone 502-588-6399.
Editorial
Student Effort Creates
Lasting Benefit to School
Thanks to some members of this year's
senior class, in the future there will be more
scholarships available to reward academic
achievement. More than 20 seniors have
pledged $1000 each to the Marlin Volz
Scholarship Fund, and a $15,000 contribu­tion
has come from an alumnus. Scholar­ships
from this fund will be awarded to
recognize academic achievement beginning
in 1985.
Until now, scholar hips for pure
academic achievement could be haritably
called meager. And, though students,
faculty, administration and even the ac­creditation
teams have criticized thi itua­tion,
it has generally been said that probabl
nothing could be done about it.
But three students, on their own in-itiative,
found something to do about it.
They accomplished their goal, and it wasn't
nearly as difficult as one might have believed.
The important thing is that someone cared
enough to take a positive step and make it
work.
It is a telling comment on something that
it took the effort of students to create thi
long-term benefit for the Ia'>' chool. It i
al o telling that it i expressly prm.ided in
the tru t agreement that no a tion of the
School of La'>' shall alter the charitable
purpose of the fund.
Though these actions of the seniors make
for a tough a t to follow, the upcoming
cla es ought to try.
To tho e' ho created and pledged to the
fund-Thanks!
Indictn1ents &
Accolades
An ACCOLADE-to the SBA, Jaw school
administration and staff, and others for
efforts to shorten the class registration pro­cedure
for the School of Law this semester.
An INDICTMENT -to whoever failed to
arrange for last semester's grades to be
available to students in time for the first
day of registration this semester.
An ACCOLADE-to the law school admini­stration
for heeding student requests to of­fer
the Trial Practice course again this
semester, and for locating an attorney to
teach it, since the professor who usually
teaches it is handling other course this
semester.
An INDICTMENT -to the hard-line, in­flexible
attitude that the law school ad­ministration
has taken toward the enforce­ment
of (some) rules against (some)
students at the School of Law this year,
which prompted one administrator to tell a
student that attendance at the funeral of
the student's grandmother would not
qualify as an acceptable excuse for his
absence from class. (After all, the rules say an
absence is an absence.)
An ACCOLADE-,-to the Moot Court Board
for giving out the spring moot court pro­blems
to the first-year students early this
year.
An INDICTMENT -for the poor planning
of faculty leaves, etc. which has resulted in
several abnormally large classes for bar
courses this semester due to the shortage of
professors to teach them.
An ACCOLADE-to the mysterious "bulle­tin
board stripper," for clearing the
old out-of-date notices and propaganda
from the school's bulletin boards and walls
(including the "this person has an overdue
book" notices).
An INDICTMENT -to the mysterious "bul­letin
board stripper," for taking down even
the useful signs, such as the tennis pairings
and signs which state, "This Door is
Broken."
An ACCOLADE-to all the students and
elves who agree to work at the library cir­culation
desk during evenings and week­ends
so that it can be kept open at
hours other than 8-5, Monday through Fri­day.
An INDICTMENT -to the Law School Pigs
who leave countless coffee cups and candy
wrappers on tables, chairs and floors
throughout the School of Law. (And you
know who you are, oink, oink.)
((Brandeis Brief'' Series
The Legal Profession
Law-Related Education
Teaches Citizenship Skills
Governor Scott M. Matheson of Utah was
an honors graduate of the University of Utah,
where he received his B.S. in Political Science
in 1950. He received his Juris Doctor ·from
Stanford Law School in 1952. His 25 years
of legal experience includes serving as
deputy county attorney, law clerk to the
U.S. District Judge in Salt Lake, and
counsel to the Anaconda Company and the
Union Pacific Railroad Company, as well
as private practice. He was the youngest
president of the Utah State Bar, from 1968
to 1969. He has also served as Bar Com­missioner
and Young Lawyers Section
chairman for the state bar. Since 1972, he
has been chairman of the Law Related
Education Committee. He is also vice­chairman
of the Youth Education for
Citizenship Committee of the ABA. He has
been active in the Democratic party for 30
years and was elected governor in 1977.
by Governor Scott M. Matheson
We Ia yers think of ourselve as one of the most misunderstood groups in our
ociety. We believe the law is an honorable profession which seeks justice and
provides a mechanism for a better society, but many people just don't see it that
way. The average person's idea of what a lawyer does is not more sophisticated
than what is presented on Perry Mason and other TV shows. Moreover, polls
repeatedly show that people don't understand or trust lawyers. In almost every
sampling of public opinion, our profession ranks far down in public confidence
and trust, sharing the bottom rank with used car salesmen, politicians and other
low-lifes.
That misunderstanding is naturally unfortunate for us, but I think it is even
worse for the American people. All of us live in an increasingly law-saturated
society in which the law has become more and more the paramount means of
ordering our priorities and bringing about change. Legislatures are busier than
ever, regulatory bodies more active, the courts more crowded with law suits. In a
society such as ours, if people fear the law and lawyers, if they don't understand
the role of law in defining and preserving basic values, and if they don't know
how to cope with the law in their daily lives, then they are hampered in their exer­cise
of citizenship-and our nation is deprived of the informed voice of the
citizenry.
Law-related education was created to build bridges between the legal profes­sion
and nonlawyers, to help de-mystify the Jaw and prepare young people for the
exercise of knowledgeable citizenship. The American Bar Association (ABA)
became involved in 1971, under the leadership of then-President Leon Jaworski.
With the ABA's help as a catalyst and with the support of bar associations and
law schools around the country, lawyers, judges, probation officers and others
from the community in every state have come together with teachers and other
educators to create programs which teach elementary and secondary students
about the Jaw, legal processes and the legal system.
In Kentucky, the s~ate bar association, the state department of education,
lawyers' wives groups and many others are engaged in creating curricula and form­ulating
educational programs. The aim isn't to make these young people
amateur lawyers or to prepare them for a career in law; rather, it is to increase
their understanding and give them skills which will help them become
knowledgeable, active and concerned citizens.
Citizenship education is one of the basic purposes of American education. The
vast majority of states already require education about the federal and state con­stitutions,
American history and American government. Yet there is plenty of
evidence to indicate that students just aren't learning these important lessons.
For example, a recent study by the U.S. Office of Education shows that most
Americans have difficulty determining whether a given action is legal. More than
half have difficulty recognizing guarantees from the Bill of Rights. In fact, in
another study, when people were shown the guarantees from the Bill of Rights
but not told where they were from, many not only failed to recognize them but
described them as "communist propaganda."
These are studies of adults, but research conducted on students-kids who are
in school and exposed to citizenship courses-shows the same dismal pattern. A
recent nationwide survey by the National Assessment of Educational Progress
revealed that during the first half of the 1970s American teenagers showed
(Continued on page II)
Mea Culpa
Due to an editing error, a quota­tion
from Associate Dean Norvie Lay,
which appeared in a page one story
about class rankings in our Nov. 21
issue, was jumbled. It should have
read, "It was the feeling of the com­mittee
that instead of separate scho­larships
for day and evening, those
individuals having completed com­parable
numbers of hours would
receive the scholarships based on be­ing
number one or number two ir­respective
of whether they had com­pleted
this in the day or evening divi­sion."
Letter to
the Editors
Dear Editors:
When I graduated from the law school in
1951 at least 50 percent of the students
worked outside. The number of graduates
who passed the bar was.in excess of 95 per­cent.
The highest levels of educational
achievement, as evidenced by law school
standings and grades on the bar (grades
were revealed then) were by students who
worked.
One might suggest that "big brother"
look to other ontrol . Maybe the sex
life i the culprit and should be controlled.
Perhap a requirement of home curfew or
the number of hours of sleep should be
specified. Maybe the culprit is social as­sociation
and a check should be made of
mother , fathers, girl friends, the places
where tudent gather and the types of con­versation
they indulge in . After uch an
analy i , order could be ut accordingly.
The real wonder of it all, \\ith the level
of intellect in the law school leadership
indicated by the "big brother" rule, is that
any of the tudents receive sufficient intelli­gent
in !ruction to pass the bar.
Incidentally, I wonder if con titutional
law on ept are taught and if o, who i
possibly teaching them .
Your very truly,
Thomas L. Ray
February, 1951
In his column in rhe December issue of
tudent La" yer, Bureon Ledbe({er, presi­dent
of the Law Student Division of the
American Bar Association, reported that he
has been requested by the Standards Re­view
Committee of the Section on Legal
Education and Admissions ro the Bar to
provide advice and comments regarding the
" 15-hour rule." This letter, as well as
those previously received and our editorial
of Oct. 3, 1978, has been forwarded to Mr.
Ledbetter. -Eds.
News -In- Brief
The Louisville Law Forum has elected
new officers. They are: Robert J. Hines,
president; Tom McDonald, vice-president;
Mike Khouri, secretary; and David Rhiner­son,
treasurer.
Evening division student David Banks
has been elected president of the Louisville
Board of Aldermen. Alderman Banks repre­sents
the Sixth Ward.
Delta Theta Phi legal fraternity has
selected new officers. They are: Lisa Linde­man,
dean; Marianna Gordon, vice-dean;
Dave McKenna, tribune; Schuyler Olt, clerk
of the exchequer; John Tobin, master of .
the rolls; Richard Hill, master of the ritual;
Steve Arnett, master schofar; Udell Levy,
bailiff; and Margaret Kramer, social chair­person.
Louisville Law Examiner, January 30, 1979 3
/ 7 I I \ -------
Inflation ups price of fame and glory
What price glory?
At the Western New England College
School of Law (WNEC/SL) in Springfield,
Massachusetts, the price for a little fame
and glory in your own lifetime has been set
at one million dollars.
The tudent new paper of W EC/ SL,
Lex Brevis, recently reported that the presi­dent
of WNEC has offered to name the
WNEC School of Law after anyone who
will donate one million dollars to the
school. The dean of WNEC/ SL, Howard
K!ilodner, said that although it would be
nice if the donor were a member of the legal
community, this is not a requirement. The
money will be used to establish an endow­ment
fund for the law school.
Dean Kalodner said that if a million
dollar donor is not found, he is not sure
how a new name for the school will be
chosen. But Dean Kalodner added that the
college president is "absolutely persuaded
that someone may come along; he's unwil­ling
to give it away and forfeit a possible
donor."
One million dollars is a lot, but con­sider
the price Harry paid for fame and
glory at the University of Montana.
Students and graduates of the Univer-sity
of Montana Law School have
established a scholarship fund in memory
of their favorite student who was a victim
of a hit-and-run motorist.
Harry Robb, who matriculated with the
class of 1977, was remembered as one who
spent more time in the law library than
most of the other students. His other
idiosyncrasies endeared him to his fellow
classmates.
Harry was a cat.
The Student Bar Association is receiving
contributions to the "Harry the Cat"
scholarship fund.
Group Wants to HALT Legal Tyranny
by Ken Golliher
Mr. Golliher is a third-year student who
has done extensive graduate work in public
relations. The opinions expressed in this
article are his own. -Eds.
If there is one powerful elite in America,
shaping the country according to its own
single perspective, it must be the legal pro­fession.
In general, it is becoming less and
less responsible to the people of the
democracy it is supposed to serve.
-Matt Valencic-
At least once a year a major pollster ex­trapolates
and publicizes the opinion of the
American people on the public image of
various occupations. Lawyers seem to have
a lock on a niche that falls somewhere be­tween
politicians and aluminum siding
salesmen.
Now, it would be a shame to let all that
public animosity and distrust go to waste,
especially in "the era of the special interest
group." Well, it isn't wasted.
The speaker quoted above, Matthew
Valencic, is the director of a Washington,
D.C. based organization called Help
Abolish Legal Tyranny (HALT). (It was
originally styled Help Abolish Legal
Thievery, but apparently the organizers
thought better of it.)
HALT literature contains extensive com­mentary
on the legal profession and its
members. Its editorial bent and tactics are
consistent. Laced with quotes from Chief
Justice Burger, Justice Brandeis and Presi-dent
Carter, the party line runs something
like this:
Attorneys have forsaken the public trust
and are largely responsible for the current
abuses of the legal system. While some
"good" lawyers do exist, most have
adopted the profit motive as their compel­ling
interest in the practice of law.
"The best lawyers gravitate towards
prestigious firms and large corporations,
often leaving the least competent attorneys
to handle the legal needs of the average
citizen."
Bar disciplinary actions are perceived as
a farce perpetrated on the public in an ef­fort
to preserve a facade of self regulation
in the public interest.
"The incidence of incompetence and
unethical conduct within the legal profes­sion
is unjustifiably excessive. It is an insult
to the profession and the nation ... only a
miniscule number of lawyers charged with
malpractice or unethical conduct are ever
publicly disciplined."
Lawyers habitually and through self- in­terest
alone fight no-fault legislation regar­ding
insurance and divorce, as well as
legislation aimed at simplifying and
decreasing the expense of settling estates.
"Lawyers refuse to relinquish their
monopolies on title searches, probate,
-divorce, accident claims, malpractice
charges, and more. The vast majority of
lawyers never will support reforms that
serve consumers by eliminating unneces-sary-
but lucrative-legal procedures and
fees." ,
While lawyers are the most highly visible
focal points of HALT's efforts, it has other
enunciated goals. Among its announced
objectives are:
-Abolition of what it terms "the
American Rule," the policy that each party
to a lawsuit must pay his own attorney's
fees. "HALT believes that legal fees should
be awarded to beleaguered victors of
frivolous law suits."
-Pushing the FTC to investigate the
costs of legal services and the regulatory ·
and disciplinary procedures of the legal
profession.
-Promotion of greater awareness on the
part of the consumers of legal services
through educational activities conducted
by state and local offices of the organiza­tion.
These offices could advise the public
when and where to seek legal advice, as
well as look over the shoulder of the local
bar in its disciplinary procedures.
-Lobbying for reform in probate and
divorce laws, again using the local offices
as a base of operations.
With this list of objectives you would
think that HALT is an organization with
unlimited supporters and a bottomless cash
box. It isn't.
According to an article in the National
Law Journal, HALT's office is on the
second floor of a sparsely furnished Capitol
(Continued on page 12)
4
Law Review
Membership
Evaluated,
Most Comment
Favorably
by Elizabeth Ward
Each spring first-year day division
students and second-year evening division
students are extended an invitation to com­pete
for candidacy on the University of
Louisville Journal of Family Law. Selec­tion
is based on a balance between scho­lastic
achievement and writing ability. In­terested
students complete a writing assign­ment
given to them by the Journal editors
who evaluate the writing samples along
with the students' grade point averages and
extend invitation of candidacy to meritorious
applicants.
The candidacy last approximately one
year, during which time, under the present
program, the candidate submits two case
notes, several "recent cases" and one stu­dent
note, which fulfills the school'
writing requirement. Candidates also as i t
in publishing the Journal by proofreading
and cite-checking.
Among the benefits of Journal member­hip
is receipt of academic credit, as much
as six credits if one becomes the editor-in­chief
during the two year period.
'The abo e is the usual PR about
membership on a Ia"' re ie . In summar
the benefits to Journal membership are
prestige, employment opportunity, academic
credit and opportunity to publish, resulting
in a type of elitism, as seen from the
perspective of the first-year students. More
informative, believable, and hopefully
more interesting are the responses made by
present and past members of various law
reviews and the comments of a student who
was eligible, but didn't join the Journal of
Family Law:
Steve Berg: Third-year student, editor­in-
chief of U of L Journal of Family Law:
"It's an awful lot of work; quite a drain
on time. The nature of the work is all
inclusive-editing, writing, research, plan­ning,
partying, layout-all but the printing
process is done here in the office. It's a
business, same as running a magazine.
Sometimes I'm here all day (24 hours);
usually, I am in the office 30 hours a week,
but not always working. On a resume the
Journal makes a lot of difference; it's the
standard for the legal profession every­where.
It's an honor; being editor-in-chief
is a big honor.
"The experience is bound to - should
anyway-help anyone who goes through it.
Editing gives increased exposure to trends
in the law. The first year consists mainly of
writing experience, using tools, the library.
The second year involves running the Jour­nal,
overseeing candidates. A new board of
editors selected from people who are already
Journal members will be in charge of the
selection process of the freshmen. Last year
we gave all interested people a sample
case, plus other cases applicable. Five
pages of the freshmen's original analyses
were evaluated along with their grade point
averages."
Phil Warf: Mid-year graduate, notes
editor:
"The most beneficial aspect of belonging
to the Journal staff is learning the practical
aspects of law by research not tied to
special courses; it gives advance knowledge
in some areas. Every federal application
Louisville Law Examiner, January 30, 1979
Photo /11· Pat C"hi~m
Another new rt>t!i,tralion prm·t>durt' "a' lrit>d lhi- 'emt">ter. o\llea,f for ,fudenh for prt•-re!(i,ft•n•£1 it wurked beller: fur other' it na' ,fill a ha"l•·- EHn
mild-mannered l)a,id Rhiner-un !!Of a lillie impatient after ··Tal..e a tid..el. tal..e a t':IL .. I ht•n• ;, no truth In thr rumor that a ,ltutrnf', ret:i,fratinn nill ht•
•·am·etled for failure to return the hlael.. pen nhit·h na prmidt'l1 "ilh lht• n •t:i,fralion pad..t•f
ask about journal experience; it's almo t a
requirement. Member hip denote high
honors-grade and writing ability. I've
enjoyed it. It's a lot of work, more work
than any other extra-curricular program.
Major law firms want law review experi­ence
to show writing ability, but small
towns, rural or family firms may not con­sider
journal experience important. The
time element is the only aspect of concern,
maybe-3-4 hours a week at a bare minimum
as a candidate; much more time is involved
in the editorial jobs. There's some social
benefit too-much interaction between the
classes. The law review is a lot of work, but
in the long run it was worth it. I put a lot
into it, but got more out of it."
Assistant Professor Linda Ewald: Past
associate managing editor U of L Journal of
Family Law:
"Journal membership is the one way
potential employers can evaluate your law
school career. It's pretty much a standard
practice to limit membership to the top
15-20 percent of the class. Personally, it
gave me the opportunity to do in-depth re­search
under semi-superv1s1on. Moot
court was the only opportunity for the rest
of the class to delve into the books. With
the Journal comes some recognition for
publication. It's the biggest consideration
for getting into graduate law school-class
rank and law review. Of course, it was time
consuming-four to five hours a week­most
students prefer to work for compen­sation
and there are some excellent stu­dents
who haven't been on it."
P.rofessor Laurence Knowles: Past editor
of Rutgers Law Journal, present advisor to
U of L Journal of Family Law, present
editor of Journal of Law and Education:
"Journal membership is prestigious-firm
members regard it highly; it's excellent for
employment. The research is far more
demanding than the other students get in­volved
in ... it emphasizes creative
research. Communication skills are em­phasized
in so far as writing is subject to
the scrutiny of peers. The third positive
aspect is that the students' material is
published in a national journal which in­creases
the employment opportunity.
Government units ask for a sample of
published writings. Some of the work is
tedious - footnote checking, spading
ani les-a lot of law i tedious. Conse­quently,
it builds the ability to deal with
tedium, but disciplines to do so. Let's say it
enhances the tedium tolerance level, makes
a better researcher. This is not really bad,
but it i the hardest part of working on a
journal."
Honorable Ellen Ewing: District Court
Judge, past co-editor of Recent Develop­ments,
U of L Journal of Family Law:
"I enjoyed the work, but I appreciated it
more afterwards. It was hairy at times,
working at night as well. I'm not sure of the
benefits, if there is a direct proportion be­tween
my position and membership on the
Journal ... not sure if it's been a great
help for employment; I'm not consciously
aware, if it was. It was a worthwhile ex­perience
as far as time. I don't regret it­wouldn't
discourage anyone. The research
and attention to form writing and style
were beneficial."
Creighton Mershon: Attorney, past
editor-in-chief, U of L Journal of Family
Law:
"It was a valuable experience. Advisor
William Read and the Journal did more for
my legal writing ability than any law
course-writing notes, editing and re­editing
notes over and over-gave some
real assistance in precise writing. It was most
beneficial in that it gave the opportunity to
do legal research, analyze recent decisions.
That's legal work ... invaluable ... what
people pay you to do. The Journal takes a
lot of time, involves exercises that help you
be a lawyer; students should grab each and
every experience to be a lawyer; it's a
practical kind of experience. Law clerking
is a similar experience, but lacks oversight."
Rebecca Westerfield: Attorney, past
editor of Kentucky Law Journal:
"Journal membership certainly helps
develop and hone up research skills.
There's a prestige value, but the problem
for me is that in a solo practice, it's mean­ingless.
It only matters if you're out after a
major firm or corporation; otherwise it's
unimportant. I found moot court a far
more practical experience. The Journal was
so academic and I'm not really sure it's
worth the time-an incredible amount of
time. It's the only mechanism for prestige.
Journal was a good forum for speaking my
mind on issues of personal interest. My
first article on Title VII won an award for
the best comment, but the time devoted to
the ·Journal was disproportionate ·to the
benefits. Clerking or moot court should be
stressed. U of K's moot court is extensive
and I was the only member of the National
Moot Court Team who was also on the
Journal. I found moot court to be more
beneficial."
Assistant Professor Ronald Eades: Past
editor of Memphis State Law Journal:
"Several things are beneficial about being
on a journal: the writing requires ex­perience
with research and cite-checking;
journal membership forces you to research
and write; academically, it's the best ex­perience;
it's also an honor as well as a
learning experience. The strongest pro, in
addition to the learning experience is that
it's with other students-not the same
pressure as for grades. It's a lot of addi­tional
work, however. It couldn't be a good
learning experience otherwise. Lawyers are
more impressed with journal mj:mbership
than anything else; it's so well-recognized
in the profession, prospective employers
know the standard. In the instance of
becoming a professor, the experience is
expected-assumed-and if you're not a
member, you're asked why not. Overall, it's
a valuable experience."
Don Becher: Second-year student, invited
but did not join the Journal staff:
"At the time, I wasn't particularly in­terested
in the topic of family law-a lot of
people are not interested in domestic
cases ... I heard they did a dog-bite case,
really "reaching." After researching
federal jobs, I find it's a definite plus to
have been on it. I have to qualify my earlier
statements because I don't know the value,
having not been on it. A lot of people (and
employers) think you're lazy if you weren't
on it and could have been. Last year, we
got the invitation, but no one really ex­plained
the importance of the Journal to
the future. I would try to impress freshmen
to try out. I guess I have nothing against it:
I might apply for next year. I'm a better ex­ample
of someone who has changed his
mind."
Louisville Law Examiner, J11nuary 30, 1979 5
Curriculum Committee
Proposes More Changes
A first-year curriculum without Legal
Methods? This question is presently under
consideration by the Curriculum Commit­tee.
According to Chairman Professor
Ralph Petrilli, the Curriculum Committee
considered this and several other important
issues last semester.
"A resolution was put in and debated
and the conclusion was to table it," Prof.
Petrilli said of the resolution to remove the
Legal Methods course from the first-year
curriculum. Part of the reason for tabling
the resolution, Prof. Petrilli added, was
to give committee members time to decide
what course could replace the Legal
Methods class in order to give the fresh­men
a "full load."
Prof. Petrilli said that the resolution will
be brought up again in the future. He
hopes that the student representatives on
the committee will bring in the student
viewpoint on the resolution at that time.
Steven Berg, a student representative on
the committee, said that he has several con­cepts
on which he would like to work in
deciding what course could replace Legal
Methods. He hopes to have suggestions for
the next meeting of the Curriculum Com­mittee.
Second-year student Tip Richmond also
serves on the committee.
Another resolution which was con-idered
by the committee and subseq uently
appro ed by the faculty may have a signifi­cant
influence on student schedules in up­coming
seme ters. Most three credit hour
classes, instead of meeting twice a week for
75 minutes per meeting as is the current
practice, will meet three times a week for 50
minutes per meet in~.
"It i a question of ho\\ it i better to
teach the paru ular ubject," Prof. Petrilli
~• . The .ndi idual prof~ or and o­ciate
Dean orvie Lay will decide whether
it is feasible to teach the particular class
three time per week.
The 50-minute chedule is not man­datory,
Prof. Petrilli added, but there is a
presumption that the three meetings per
week schedule is preferable. Prof. Petrilli
finally noted that scheduling problems will
have to be resolved to accommodate the in­creased
use of class space.
JAMES P. QUEENAN
2509 Savannah Road
Louisville, KY 40222
(502) 425-2174
THE LAWYERS
CO-OPERATIVE
PUBLISHING COMPANY
II II
LCp
A resolution that would require second­year
students to take certain classes in
order to graduate failed to pass the Cur­riculum
Committee. The resolution would
have required the following courses for
graduation: Constitutional Law II,
Evidence, Remedies, Corporations, Tax I
& II, Administrative Law, and Legislation.
The second-year curriculum is currently
totally elective, according to Prof. Petrilli.
"Some of these courses should be re­quired,"
Prof. Petrilli contended, "on the
theory that no matter how you practice
law, whether you practice as in-house
counsel for an insurance company or you
represent the American Indian tribes in the
Massachusetts cases, there is a certain core
amount of information that no matter how
you practice law, all lawyers must have
some contact with."
Prof. Petrilli, in putting together the
resolution, felt that the courses included
are essential to the practice of law in any
area a student may choose.
Mr. Berg explained that he voted against
the resolution because he believes that
students are responsible enough to take
care of their own scheduling needs. He added
that he does not see why one "bar course"
should be distinguished from another.
Some students may not wish to be in­volved
with certain areas after graduation
and they should not be required to take
classes in those areas, Mr. Berg maintained.
The majority of the students take the
courses anyway, he concluded.
Prof. Petrilli mentioned that the resolu­tion
will be reconsidered at the end of the
year. Students and other members of the
law school may wish to express opinions on
the proposal before that time.
In its report released in December, the
d Hoc Commiuee to tudy the July 1978
Bar Examination Re ult con luded that
the pass rate for graduates who had taken
all or most of the "bar courses" tended to
be higher than for those who had taken
fewer of these courses. Because, however,
most students take most of the bar courses
and no one course appears to be critical to
passing the bar, the committee recom­mended
that the faculty not adopt a re­quirement
such as the one proposed. See
related story on page 6.
The Law
in Breadth
AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE 2d
- An encyclopedic A-Z text
statement of the complete body
of law - state and federal, civil
and criminal, substantive and
procedural. Here you'll find the
principles of law plus direct
leads to the supporting cases,
related annotations , forms,
proofs, and trial techniques. Use
it as your first search source in
office consultations, solving tax
problems, trial preparation, brief
writing.
0 authoritative treatises on
431 modern legal topics
0 cases from all jurisdictions
0 practice and procedural
coverage
0 Uniform Laws, including the
Uniform Commercial Code
0 federal law - cases and
statutes discussed and
analyzed
0 New Topic service.
The f .'xaminer is luukin~t fur a few serious students to join I he slaff. Membership on !he slaff re­quires
a professional demeanor and dedkalinn In hard wnrk. Piclured abnve is Ginny Hamm,
la s! semesler's business mana~ter. whn ~traduated in llecember. We are searchin~t fnr nlhers nf
her t·aliber. If ~nu are inleresled and lhink ~· nu t·an measure up In the slandards we have set,
whkh are sn aplly personified b~· Ms. Hamm, slnp by nur nffice in I he Pnverl)' Annex any lime.
Justice Palmore Suggests
Better Distribution of Judges
Franldort,-Idec.lly, the number of
district judges assigned to an area should
be based on population, not on the case­load,
John S. Palmore, chief justice of the
Kentucky Supreme Court, said last month.
Chief Justice Palmore had been asked by
the prosecutors subcommittee of the Task
Force to Study the Commonwealth's Legal
System to comment both on a proposal to
change the number of district judges and a
proposal for a single prosecutorial system
as opposed to the present dual system.
Although the Supreme Court has stated
that it is not mandatory that "one man,
one vote" be carried over to "one man, one
court" that is still a fundamental principle,
said Chief Justice Palmore. The chief
justice suggested that 40,000 people per
court would be a good rule-of-thumb if it
did not mean cutting across county lines.
In any event, each county should have at
least one court, he added.
Chief Justice Palmore said the present
number of judges is close to the number of
district judges "that the job calls for," and
any inequality in caseload could be ad­justed
by judges with lighter schedules
assisting in areas with heavier caseloads.
Judges "moving back and forth" when
necessary to share heavy caseloads in cer­tain
regions would be cheaper than adding
a second judge when only one and a half is
needed, Chief Justice Palmore said. In ad­dition,
there would be another advantage
in that judges would often be holding court
in neighboring counties where they would
not be subject to political pressures present
in home counties, he said.
The chief justice cautioned against
redistricting as an alternative. Redistricting
is "a can of worms ... trouble for the
legislature . .. trouble for anybody . .. "
he said.
Concerning the proposed single pro­secutorial
system, Chief Justice Palmore
said he favors one full-time prosecutor who
is free from ties with anyone, and respon­sible
only to the people who elected him .
There are several ways this could be ac­complished,
he said.
Presently, Kentucky has a dual system of
local prosecution with felonies prosecuted
in the circuit court by Commonwealth's at­torneys,
and misdemeanors and felony
preliminary hearings prosecuted in the
various lower courts by municipal pro­secutors
and by the elected county at­torneys,
who also have extensive civic
duties. It has been suggested that this dual
system be unified into a single office.
In another matter, a subcommittee
member asked the chief justice what he
thought was the greatest weakness in the
criminal justice system.
"At the risk of sounding facetious, the
men sitting in nine chairs in Washington,
D.C. (are the greatest weakness)," said
Chief Justice Palmore. For example, a
decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that
state-funded attorneys must be provided
for if necessary even in a traffic ticket case
will be expensive both in time and money,
he said.
In a related matter, Chief Justice
Palmore told a legislative committee
January 5th that he would like to see a
schedule of traffic fines implemented in
which tiY. ~.:=~>-·~.&>. ·:~::)L,,~&\·=~-=
A concern mentioned by many of
the U of L graduates who took the
July 1978 Kentucky Bar Examination
when contacted by the Ad Hoc Com­mittee
to Study the July 1978 Bar
Examination Results was that the
Louisville PLS Bar Review course
began and ended a week later than
the Lexington PLS Bar Review course,
.so that those enrolled in the Louis­ville
course had less time for a final
review of their study materials than
those enrolled in the Lexington course.
When contacted by the Examiner,
Donald H. Smith, the president of
Professional Lecturing Services,
Inc., said that he did not think that
the difference between the starting
dates for the Lexington and Louis­ville
courses "had any effect what­ever
on the Bar results ." Mr. Smith
said that the Lexington course started
earlier last year because University of
Kentucky graduates had an earlier
graduation date than at U of L, and
the UK graduates requested an earlier
starting date for the bar review course.
In the past, Mr. Smith said, the
U of L graduates had expressed a pre­ference
for a later starting date (the
review course for the July Bar Exam­ination
usually begins the first Mon­day
in June). If the U of L grad­uates
this year would prefer an earlier
starting date, however, Mr. Smith
said "I'll do whatever they want, as
long as it's not to their detriment."
He said that PLS would be willing to
have the courses at all three locations
(PLS sponsors a review course in
Covington as well as in Lexington
and Louisville) start the third Monday
in May if the graduates expressed a
preference for that starting date.
Mr. Smith also indicated that classes
could be held five days a week in­stead
of on weekends and weekdays,
and that classes could be scheduled
for the afternoon instead of the even­ing
if a majority of those enrolled in
the course asked for such a schedule.
It had been his experience, Mr.
Smith said, that graduates preferred
having a longer period of time be­tween
graduation and the start of
the bar review to give them "a break
from the regimen of study." If the
graduates had more than three weeks
from the time the course ended until
taking the examination, he said, they
did not tend to apply themselves as
much during the course sessions.
"Just going to class isn't going to get
it," Mr. Smith warned, and graduates
should not take the course lightly and
expect to catch up during the time
between the end of the review course
and the bar examination.
Mr. Smith suggested that if U of L
graduates who plan to take the July
Bar Examination would like to have
the PLS review course start earlier
than it did last year, they should
circulate a petition to determine the
demand for an earlier starting date .
If about 70 percent of the graduates
agree on a particular starting date,
Mr. Smith said, he will try to arrange
the bar review schedule accordingly.
May graduates interested in sign­ing
such a petition should contact
SBA President Steve Arnell.
Law School
G.P.A. More than 40 40
2.0-2.20 500/o (2 of 4) 00/o (0 of[)
2.21-2.50 500Jo (I of 2) 600Jo (3 of 5)
2.51-2.80 IOOOfo (2 of 2) lOOOJo (2 of 2)
2.81-3.00 IOOO!o (I of I) 500Jo (I of 2)
Above 3.00 IOOOJo (3 3)
Total 6711fo (6 of9} 690Jo (9 of 13)
that working during law school does not
harm a student's chances later to pass the
bar examination."
A matrix was drawn which shows the
pass rate for each category after combining
the number of hours worked each week
with the graduate's law school grade point
average (see table 6). An ABA standard
which has been interpreted as restricting
full-time students from working more than
15 hours a week in outside employment was
not regularly enforced until this year by the
School of Law, so that over half the full­time
division graduates were found to have
worked more than 15 hours per week; the
pass rate for this group was found to be
greater than for those who worked 15
hours or less each week, and both of these
groups did better than the· students who did
not work at all (see table 8). (Because of the
difficulty encountered by many law schools
in enforcing the "IS-hour rule," it is being
reviewed by the Standards Review Com­mittee
of the Section on Legal Education
and Admissions to the Bar this year ac­cording
to a column by Law Student Divi-ion
president Bureon Ledbetter in the
December 1978 issue of Student Lawyer
magazine.)
Tal*7
f:.-tllkWBIIrlll law
hll-llme or,........._ diYilio•.
by pass rate
FuU-time Part-time
division division
\\ ork:ed 78f1e (51 of 64) 6287o (18 of29)
Did not
work
Future surveys of this type might try to
determine why so many students in the full­time
division choose to work, the report
suggested. If they work to gain practical ex­perience,
as from a clerking job, the com­mittee
suggested that the law school may
want to establish a pecial internship pro­gram
similar to that currently being im­plemented
in the Southern District of New
York (this program was reported on in the
October 24, 1978 issue of the Examiner in
the article, "Federal Judge Suggests Intern­ship").
If the students worked because they
needed extra money, the report suggested
that more scholarship money or additional
information about obtaining student loans
should be made available. (Although U of L
promised the ABA that it would make avail­able
a total of $108,300 for financial aid to
law students in the academic years 1976-77
and 1977-78, U of L fell more than $20,000
short of meeting that promise over the two­year
period. See the article in the September
12, 1978 issue of the Examiner, ''Questions
Remain Concerning Accreditation").
TableS
Full-time division graduates,
by fact and extent of work, by pass rate
Worked more than
15 hours
Worked 15 hours
or Jess
Did not work
Pass rate
830Jo (38of 46)
Louisville Law Examiner, January 30, 1979 7
21-39 16-20 IJ-15
670/o (2 of 3) 00/o (Oof I)
6011Jo (3 of 5) OOJo (0 of I)
88111o (7 of'S) IOOIIJo (3 of 3)
67l\lo (2 of3) IOOGi'o (2 of 2)
100% (3 of
81117o (22 of 27)
Another area examined by the committee
was that of the curriculum followed by the
graduates during their years in law school.
It was found that the pass rate of the
graduates who had taken all or most of the
"bar courses" (courses on subjects covered
by the Kentucky Bar Examination) tended
to be higher than for those graduates who
had not taken as many bar courses (see
table 9). The tables also showed, however,
that most graduates take most of the bar
courses, and that no one course appears to
be critical to a student's ability to pass the
bar examination (see table 10). The commit­tee
recommended that because of these find­ings,
the faculty should not adopt a re­quirement
that would limit a student's
freedom to choose courses. (At the present
time, a student at U of L is not required to
take any particular courses after the first
year. The Curriculum Committee has
recently come forward with a proposal to
require certain courses after the first year,
howe er.) The report concluded, "That
one's chances of bar exam success improve
with the number of bar courses taken is
enough of an incentive to take as many bar
courses as possible.''
Table9
Number of bar courses not taken,
BarCo.nes
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
by pass rate
oiTakea Pass Rate
830Jo (5 of 6)
800fo (20 of 25)
7611Jo (31 of 42)
6811Jo (13 of 19)
5011Jo (7 of 14)
71 OJo (5 of 7)
OOJo (0 of 1)
1000/o (1 of 1)
OO'Jo (0 of 1)
A final area studied by the committee
was that of how the U of L graduates
prepared for the July 1978 examination
during the t\ o month immediately
preceding the examination . Mo t of the
graduates, 96 percent, took some form of
bar review course, the most popular one
being the one sponsored by Professional
Lecturing Services, Inc. (PLS), an affiliate
of Bar Review Institute, Inc. Don Smith,
the president of PLS, told the committee
that 78 percent of U of L graduates who
took his course passed the bar examina­tion.
Of the four graduates who did not take
any kind of bar review course, three of
them passed the examination. All four had
an LSA T of over 600, and the three who
passed had a law school GP A of over 2.64.
The graduate who did not take a review
course and failed the examination had a
law school GPA of 2.3 .
Two tables were used in the report to
determine the effect of regular attendance
at the review sessions and pre-session
review of the lecture materials on the pass
rate of U of L graduates who took the PLS
course. As one might expect, the pass rate
for those who attended all of the sessions
was higher than for those who frequently
missed them, although few people missed
the sessions. The frequency with which the
graduate reviewed the material prior to the
lectures, however, did not appear to have
any significant effect on the graduate's per­formance
on the examination. In fact, the
more classes ...
. "*···· ' : ... • [~...].:~~:;;~:~~"\:'>
graduates who said they never reviewed the
materials before the lecture had the highest
pass rate (see tables 11 and 12).
Fewer graduates worked during the two
months before the bar examination than
worked during law school, the committee
found, but once again, the employment did
not appear to hurt the graduate's chances
for success on the examination. Only 58
percent, or 60, of the graduates worked
during the two months prior to the exam,
while 42 percent, or 43, graduates did not.
The pass rate for the first group was 75 per­cent;
the pass rate for those who did not
work was 70 percent.
Would the person who picked up my
books from the library table please
return them?
-Two Weeks Behind
The Key Number System
takes you from one
case in any law book
to all cases in point
Take a cited opinion . Check the Table of Cases in your
Key Number Digest. There you'll find the Key Number
that classifies that case and all others in point. And this
method works even when you begin with cases from
books not based on the Key Number System. That's
one way the compatible Key Number System makes
your library more valuable, more useful. Find out how
you can put it to work too, today.
0. K. CURRY, JR.
B. S. Universjty of Kentucky
J. D. University of Kentucky
WEST PUBLISHING COMPANY
Sales Representative
Phone: 502/584/5058
8 Louisville Law Examiner, Januar}30, 1979
Third-ytar student John MrCarty desrribes what hap~ned the ni~eht he saved a neil(hbnr frnm a
fire in the house next door to his home. He injured his hand when he broke a window In help the
man.
Counseling Team to be Organized
by Sam Carl
"Legal Malpractice: Yes, No or Maybe"
is the subject of this year's Client Counsel­ing
Competition. Sponsored by the American
Bar Association's Law Student Division,
the competition involves most AHA­approved
law schools and boasts the par­ticipation
of teams from 120 such schools
in 1978.
As faculty advisor, Professor Marlin
Volz will organize a team from U of L for ·
the regional competition to be held on
March 10, at the John Marshall Law School
in Cleveland. Teams placing first in the
regionals advance to the National Compe­tition
scheduled on March 31 and April I
at the University of San Diego School of
Law, San Diego, California.
The competition has a unique format
wherein team members face a potential
client in a law office consultation situation .
Acting as attorneys, the students must con­duct
an interview with a person posing as
the client and then advise him concerning
the hypothetical question. The problem it­self
is provided by the Law Student Divi­sion
in the form of a short memorandum
similar to what a law office secretary
might be given when a client calls to
make an appointment.
Teams consist of two law students and
an alternate, with one team representing
each school. U of L's team in last year's
competition won the first of two rounds
in the regionals to take second place
honors. Representing U of L were Alan
Schmitt, Carl Arnold, anp Ted Pappas,
all of whom have graduated.
Instructor James Ragan encourages
interested law students from U of L to
contact him or Prof. Volz, as team open­ings
still exist. Winning teams in the regional
competition will receive a certificate mounted
on a walnut plaque for their school, as well
as individual certificates for the team mem­bers.
At the national competition, the first,
second and third place teams receive school
plaques and individual certificates.
Student Injures Hand While
Saving Neighbor From Fire
"It's a good feeling to know you can
help somebody out," says John McCarty.
He should know. On the morning of
December 18th Mr. McCarty, a third-year
day division student at the School of Law,
rescued a man who was trapped in a burn­ing
building on South Fourth Street in
Louisville.
Mr. McCarty and his wife, Carolyn,
were awakened at I :30 a .m. by the sound of
breaking glass and cries for help. When
they got up to investigate, they discovered
that the building next to their apartment
building was on fire, and a man was trapped
on a third-story window ledge of the burn­ing
structure.
Acting quickly, Mr. McCarty broke out a
window which faced the adjacent building,
severely cutting his hand in the process.
By this time, the man on the ledge was
threatening to jump.
Carolyn McCarty tried to calm the man
down while Mr. McCarty searched for
something with which to bridge the distance
between the two buildings. He found a step
ladder, placed it across the gap between
the buildings, and helped the man climb to
safety.
The entire episode was over in only two
or three minutes, Mr. McCarty said.
Of the injuries to people caused by the
December fire, Mr. McCarty "got the worst
of it," he said. He still wears a covering
over the injured hand .
Since the fire, the McCartys have pur­chased
two fire alarms and a fire ladder for
their apartment. Mr. McCarty said that
they are more concerned about the possi­bility
of fire now as a result of their ex­perience,
and found it hard to sleep soundly
again until just recently.
In recognition of his rescue effort during
the fire, Mr. McCarty is to be awarded the
Mayor's Citation.
Scholarship Fund Established
(Continued frnm page I)
Soliciting for pledges to the Fund started
in December, 1978, and according to Mr.
Golliher, will continue until they have gone
through the senior class. However, dona­tions
are not limited to this year's senior
class. "We invite the alumni to contribute
to the fund either by contributing to the
fund or signing the agreement," said Mr.
Golliher.
Mr. Russell noted that the Fund recently
recei ed a sizeable contribution from an
unknown benefacwr. As to the soliciting of
this year's senior class, Mr. Russell said,
"It's not been hard sell. They contribute if
they want. If they don't, that's fine. The
response has been real good and we are go­ing
to have some more. Even those who
don't sign now will probably donate even­tually."
According to agreements already signed
by 24 law students, each party pledges
$1,000 to be paid in installments into the
Fund during the period between May I,
1979 and May I, 1985. Subscribers to the
agreement can pay their $1 ,000 into the
Fund in any manner they choose. For ex­ample,
there could be a donation of zero
the first year and $200 a year for the next
five years, or they could be single $1 ,000
donations in any of the six years.
The decision to name the Fund the
Marlin M. Volz Scholarship Fund was
made "because of his years of service to the
law school and because of his popularity
with the students and in the community,"
said Mr. Russell.
The reaction to the Fund has been good,
as evidenced by the pledges already made.
"In the past, the alumni haven't done their
best. You can't have a successful school
unless the alumni support it. I'd like to see
this thing snowball and get everyone in­volved,"
said Mr. Russell.
Mr. Golliher noted that he "couldn't be
more pleased; it's already a success. I've
always been proud of my classmates, but
nothing that they have done individually or
collectively has impressed me more than
this."
Moving?
Please send us your new address
four weeks in advance.
WOODY'S TAVERN
&ALE GARDEN
brook & burnett
Please pick up one of our Special
Calendars at the Law School Library ...
Thursdays (Pitchers $1.50) All Day
Strict Dress Code (No Disco Apparel)
~OODY
Louisville Law Examiner. January 30, 1979 9
_Greenebaum Award Recognizes
Expertise in Legal Writing
The Samuel L. Greenebaum Award and
Fund was established by agreement be­tween
Mrs. Rita L. Greenebaum, Mr.
Greenebaum ' widow, and the University
of Loui ville Foundation, dated January
II , 1977. The award is given annually at
the Award Day ceremony at the School of
Law to that law student in the day or night
di i ion who "demonstrates the highest
degree of excellence and achievemer.t in
legal writing."
An wriuen legal work, whether brief,
article or memorandum, prepared during
the preceding academic year is eligible for
consideration for the award. The Dean of
the Law School or his designee, determines
the recipient of the award on an annual
basi .
The award consists of a plaque engra ed
with the name of the winner each year and a
ca h award in the amount of $100. The
amount of the cash award may be increased
from time to time at thee ·pres request of
Mrs. Greenebaurn. Additional income earned
by the fund is made available to the Dean
of the La School as a discre.tionary fund
to help defray unusual costs and expenses
which were not planned for in the annual
budget.
Mr. Greenebaurn was educated at the
University of Michigan where he received
an AB degree cum laude in 1924 and was
later graduated from the Harvard Law
School in 1927. He was admitted to
Variety of Courses
o t omey
ALI-ABA The American Law
Institute-American Bar Association Com­mlltee
on Cont inuing Profes ional Educa-
11 n ( Ll- B ) pon ring our e
covenng a 11riet) of ubjec in ommg
months.
The ninth annual cour e of tud} on en­vironmental
law will be presented February
22-24 in Wa hington, D.C. The program
will be pon ored by ALI-ABA in conjunc­tion
with the Environmental Law Institute
and the mith onian Institution.
Recent developments under the ational
Environmental Policy ct and under
federal and tate air and "ater pollution
control laws, and the ne" to i ub tance
control legislation will be revie,~ed.
Another annual course for lawyers, this
one about estate planning, will be held
March 15-16 in St. Louis, and May 3-4 in
Boston. The Bo ton presentation will be
co-sponsored by the Massachusens Continu­ing
Legal Education- ew England Law Insti­tute,
Inc.
practice in the federal courts of Kentucky
and the District of Columbia and was a
member of the bar of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the U.S.
Supreme Court. From 1930 to 1933 he served
as assistant county attorney for Jefferson
County. He was president of the Com­munity
Chest of Louisville and Jefferson
County from 1948-49. He served as chair­man
and a member of the Louisville Civil
Service Board in the 1960s. He was active
both in the Louisville and Kentucky Bar
Association as well as the Association of
the Bar of the City of New York.
Throughout his career, Mr. Greenebaum
set the highest possible standards for legal
writing done by his partners and associates.
He felt that the written word was the
primary tool of the lawyer, both in ad­vocacy
and persuasion as well as in com­munication
with clients and fellow at­torneys.
Therefore, his partners and
friends wanted to establish this award to
reflect his sincere and abiding interest in
upgrading the quality and excellence of
legal writing at the University of Louisville
School of Law, a ording to Ronald D.
Ray, member the law firm of Greenebaum,
Doll and McDonald.
Family Law Essay Contest
The Howard C. Schwab Memorial
Award Essay Contest is conducted annually
by the Family Law Section of the American
Bar Association in cooperation with the
Toledo Bar Association and the Ohio Bar
Association as a memorial to their deceased
leader. The prizes are awarded from a
memorial fund created by The Toledo Bar
Association and administered by the Ohio
State Bar Foundation.
The purpose of the contest is to create a
greater interest in the field of Family Law
among all law students of the nation, and
particularly the Law Student Division of
the American Bar Association.
All second and third year students enrolled
in AHA-approved law schools, and first
year students enrolled in said schools where
the subject of family law is part of the first
year curriculum, are eligible to compete,
except employees of the American Bar
Association, Ohio Bar Association, or
Toledo Bar Association.
The winners of first, second, and third
places as selected and announced by the
judges, will be presented with cash awards
in the amounts of $500, $300, and $200,
re pectively.
Ea-ch entry must be the work of a single
individual.
The subject may be any aspect of Family
Law which the contestant chooses. Sug­gested
length is about 3,000 words, though
the length may be more or less, as the sub­ject
merits. Essays scheduled to be published
or which have previously been published
are ineligible for consideration.
Entries will be judged on the basis of
timeliness of subject, practicality,
originality, quality of research, and clarity
of style.
Law students desiring to enter the con­test
should write to Howard C. Schwab
Memorial Award Essay Contest, Section of
Family Law, American Bar Assocation,
1155 East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois
60637, requesting an entry form, which
must be completed and returned with the
essay.
Entries for the 1979 awards must be sub­mitted
to the Howard C. Schwab Memorial
Award Essay Contest, at the above ad­dress,
postmarked on or before April 16,
1979.
J>lwto by J>at Chism
Although recent legislation has caused
estate planning to become an increa ingly
complex and specialized area of practice,
this course of swdy is designed for the
practitioners with some experience in the
planning of modest-sized estates, rather
than for the estate planning specialist. The
faculty will address itself to a discussion of
what difference the new laws make and
how the approach to estate planning will
shift to maximize taxpayer benefits.
"The brain is like the hand. It ~rows with usin~."- Louis Brandeis
Program topics are: how the tax law
changes affect lifetime giving; planning for
interspousal transfers; status of regulations
under the 1976 and 1978 acts; planning for
generation-skipping transfers in trust; post­mortem
planning; planning including
special use valuation; and effect of tax laws
on payment of qualified plan benefits and
other deferred compensation and life in­surance.
Congress has enacted a new Federal
Bankruptcy Code and the new code will be
the subject of another course of study for
lawyers.
Because of the far-reaching significance
of this new law, the first complete revision
of the bankruptcy laws of the United States
in 40 years, ALI-ABA will offer this course
in five cities during the next 16 months.
These courses will be presented on March
29-31, 1979, in Dallas; June 14-16, 1979, in
San Francisco; October 4-6, 1979, in
Chicago; and January 24-26, 1980, in New
Orleans.
The program will be taught by practicing
lawyers. The faculty will include two
former Congressional staff attorneys who
were among the principal draftsmen of the
new law. Designed to emphasize the prac­tical,
the course will facilitate a thorough
understanding of how the law will affect
practitioners and their clients. It will em­phasize
in-court and out-of-court techni­ques
and tactics which will constitute the
art of practicing under the new law. Corpo­rate
and commercial lawyers will benefit
from an in-depth discussion of the effect of
the code on lending and leasing to solvent
and insolvent businesses.
A new course for lawyers on professional
malpractice will be offered March 16-17 in
Denver.
This program will examine four inter­related
areas of professional liability:
medical malpractice, legal malpractice, ar­chitects'
and engineers' malpractice, and
accountants' malpractice. Actual case
histories as well as anticipated future prob-
!ems facing the professional will be con­sidered.
The program will begin with an overview
of many areas of professional liability, in­cluding
that of lawyers, doctors, hospitals,
accountants, teachers, architects, engineers,
surveyors, insurance brokers, psychiatrists,
and morticians. Following the overview
will be discussions of professional liability
in four of the most litigated areas by promin­ent
writers, scholars, and litigators in
those areas.
For further information, or to register
for the courses, please contact the
Registrar, ALI-ABA, 4025 Chestnut
Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104; or
telephone (215) 387-3000.
10
Moot Court
Makes Changes
(Continued from page I)
to assist generally in the development of a
portion of the law school curriculum.
The first tangible product of the commit­tee's
efforts was a moot court handbook
which was distributed to first-year students
at no charge. It includes instructions for
the required memorandum and brief as well
as the preparation of the oral presentation.
However, Mr. Seiffert stresses that the
real key to the program changes is in the
concentrated use of upperclassmen as stu­dent
mentors. "Each mentor plays a very
important role and they must be available
to the mentees ... they will be required to
be available a certain amount of time."
Twenty-six mentors were selected prior
to the semester break. They received
specific instructions on how much informa­tion
to distribute and how much they can
help the mentees with their research and
preparation. Each mentor .supervises four
or five mentees.
The mentor program is supervised by
third-year student Jerry Mirabito and
second-year student Lisa Hughes.
Heightening the emphasis on the men­tors'
contribution is seen by the committee
as a method to insure some uniform quality
in the program. Students will be dealing
only with their mentors in discussing their
problems.
The committee has reinstituted the en­forcement
of the Honor Code during the
Moot Court program; a first year student
who receives aid from anyone other than
his mentor in preparing his ritten y,ork
will be in violation of the Honor Code.
Mr. eiffe rt tres ed that the re-implementation
of the Honor Code
re tri tton a n 1 due to an} Im­proprieties
in pa t year . " It ' not puni h­ment
. It simply enables those who do the
v ork to get the credit for it. I o, it add
redibiht} to our program."
This year's problem concern only area
which are covered during the fi r t year of
law school, specifically torts, contracts,
and civil procedure. ''The coverage of legal
subjects outside the first-year curriculum
was a major source of complaints in prior
years," Mr. Seiffert said.
!though this year's hypothetical cases
were obtained from ew York University's
Law School, Mr. Seiffert said that the
Moot Court Board is current ly working
towa rd a program under which it would
develop all of the problems for its pro­gram.
Louisville Law Examiner, January 30, 1979
Second-year student Bruce Reynolds l'nnfers with his )(rllUp uf mentees un their muut l'nurt problem.
Fir t-year tudem received their pro­blem
during the emester brea k o that
they could begin their research then if they
desired to do so. The program began for­mally
on return from break , when the pa r­ticipant
received their handbook . OY.
they are preparing a legal memorandum
discussing all aspects of the issues in olved .
The memorandum will be ungraded.
Next the participants will each prepare a
brief supporting an argument of one of the
parties. This will be graded by Instructor
James Ragan. First round oral arguments
will be held March 10-11 .
The members of the freshman moot
court committee a re: Chris J ohnson, Jim
Thoma , J erry Mira bito, Li a Lindeman,
Judy Kidwell, Tom Wine, Bruce Reynold ,
Doug Dowell, Don Becher, Lisa Hughes,
David Barber, and Jim Seiffert.
Few Students Join LSD
Membership in the Law Student Division
of the American Bar A ociat ion at the
niver ity of Loui ville i one of the lowest
in the ixth cir uit, ac ording to Pam
Lambert, ci rcuit governor.
As of the end of November, the law
school's membership was only 25 .8 percent
of the student body. Only one new member
was enrolled during that month. A 30 per­cent
membership level is required to be
eligi ble for project gra nts from the Law
Student Services Fund .
Member hip in the division ent it les a stu­dent
to participate in activi tie of the eni or
bar, a well a to attend conference of the
La'' tudent Divi ion. There a re over 30
na tional liaison po iti ons which have
recently been declared open. A liaison par­ticipates
in the acti vities of a secti on of the
meri a n Bar A ocia tion in formulating
propo als, drafting legislation and in­vestigating
problem areas of the law.
Division membership also entitles
students to participate in a number of
wntmg contests. Reduced rates are
available for subscriptions to the ABA
Journal and for insurance. The division
sponsors nat ional contests for law
students, including the National Appellate
Advocacy and Client Counseling competi­ti
ons.
Membership in the Law Student Divi sion
costs five dollars per year. Members receive
the monthly magazine, Student Lawyer.
ABA/Law Student Division Application (Please Print) Reduced Section Rates
Name ________________________________________ ~~-----------------------
Last Forst M1ddlf'
Street _____________________________ Ctty _____________ state ______ ztp __ _
Ma1ilng Address
Law School ___________________ ctty __________ _
Prospect1ve
B11th Date Law School Entry Graduat1on Date
DO DODD DDDDDDDD Month Day Year Month Year Month Year
As a Law Student member of the ABA, I will. abide by its Constitution and By-laws.
S9narure-------------------------------------------------------------------------
0 Enclosed is $5.00 for membership. 0 I am already a Law Student Division
member. 0 Enclosed is $3.00 more for 12 months of the ABA Journal.
Send check and application to:
American Bar Association
Membership Department
1155 East 60th Street
Chicago. Illinois 60637
Office Use Only: DDDDDD Numeric
State Code
Alpha
State Code
Law School
Code
(AL) Administrative Law . ........... . .. _I_] $5
(AT) Anlitrust Law . . . . . . . . . . . ... n $3
(BA) Bar Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . [J $3
(CL) Corporation. Banking and Business Law .... . ..... . .. . .0 $3
(CR) Criminal Law .............. . . . ....... . .. .[] $5
(EP) Economics of Law Practice ....... . ... ... .... .. . .... 0 $3
(FL) Family Law . . ........ . ......... . ... . . ... . ........ .lJ $5
(GP) General Practice .. . . . . . . .. . .. . . ..... . . 0 $5
(lA) Individual Rights and Responsibilities . . . . .. . ... ... .0 $5
(IL) Insurance. Negligence and Compensation Law . . .. . .. . . 0 $5
(IC) International Law . . ... : ......... . .. .. .0 $5
(JA) Judicial Administration .................. . ..... . .. . . . . 0 $3
(LL) Labor Relations Law ... . . . . . . .. . .0 $5
(LE) Legal Educat1on and Admission to the Bar ..... . ... . .. . 0 $3
(L T) Litigatton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . ......... 0 $5
(LG) Local Government Law .... .. . . .................. . ... 0 $5
(NR) Natural Resources Law . . . . . .... . ... . .... . ..... .0 $5
(PT) Patent. Trademark and Copyright Law ............ .0 $3
(PC) Public Contract Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... . ... . .. .. .0 $3
(PL) Public Utility Law ...... . .... ... ... .. ... . . . .... . .. .. . .0 $3
(RP) Real Property. Probate and Trust Law . .. .... . ... . .. .. .0 $3
(ST) Science and Technology . . ... . .... .. . . . ... ... .... . .. .0 $3
(TX) Taxation . . . . . ... . . . . .... . . ... . .... ......... . .0 $6
(YL) Young Lawyers .. · . . .... . ... .. .... . ........ .. . . .. . . .0 $3
Louisville Law Examiner. January 30, 1979 11
Matheson Urges Support For
Law-Related Education
(Continued from paj!e 2)
declines in their knowledge of government and lost ground in their understanding
of the political process and their willingness to participate in it.
The results of the National Assessment were not totally bleak, however.
Students in 1975 did better than their counterparts six years earlier in recognizing
and supporting constitutional rights and understanding the role of law in a
democrati society.
It is difficult to interpret te ts and draw conclusions, but the National Assess­ment's
report does suggest that one reason teenagers did better on recognizing
con titutional rights may be the "marked increase in statewide citizenship and
Ia -related education project " that has taken place in this decade.
If this is true, why are these courses succeeding, and what can they offer that
traditional civics education cannot? That's a complex question, but I'd like to
suggest that law-related programs may be doing the job because they don't try to
preach to students or give them an idealized picture of our society; rather, they
deal realistically with important problems.
Let me give an example. Many have reported that traditional civic education is
too dull, that it focuses on the formal processes of government-how a bill
become a law, for example-and doesn't give students insight into the dynamics
of how our governmental and legal systems actually work.
Law-related education is different. In the best Law-related programs, the study
of law is a way of asking question • not a device for getting unrealistic answer .
Instead of ha ing students memorize the First Amendment, law-related education
shows them the Fir t Amendment in action by examining tough cases in which the
free speech guarantee is applied in real situations. Does a radical group have the
right to hold a rally in a hostile community, even if violence might break out? Do
they have a right to hold the rally in the middle of rush hour? Do they have the
right to use loudspeakers in a residential neighborhood? Do they have the right to
quietly pass out leaflets, or to silent! protest by sewing replicas of the American
flag onto their clothing?
These are not abstract questions but the kind of diffi ult concerns that are raised
whenever the Constitution is applied. Studying the Con titution through legal
cases i an e cellent way of making it orne ali e, and law-relate~ education can
help make tudents begin to analyze real issues as they affect r~al people of all age
group and ba kgrounds.
One of the great strengths of the law-related education movement is that so
man people from the community-lawyers, judges, law students and faculty,
police officers, probation officers-are willing to share their time with teachers
and students, willing to make the law more alive and real.
Community resource people can help in many ways. They can work with
teachers on curriculum development; the can help train teachers; they can come
into the etas room - ionall} to pea ith tudents, take pan in law-related
· i th Ia r ' ud e or d i or for mock trials.
nd the> can help out of the Ia room~ too. One of the real pluses of la'-"­related
education is the multiplicity of sites for students to visit. Courts, correc­tional
in titutions, police stations and lawyers' offices are but a few possibilities
for field e cursions-and at each one volunteer resource persons can answer
tu t 'qu tion and enri h the experience.
T · ar pi n . I numu f r y u to h lp. entu ky held an ambitiou
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Various-sized print newspapers published by students of the University of Louisville School of Law. The print edition may be found in the University of Louisville Law Library or the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center.

The publications digitized in this collection are the property of the University of Louisville School of Law and are not to be republished for commercial profit. To inquire about reproductions, permissions, or for additional information, email lawlibrary@louisville.edu.